Last Week police arrested two men after a series of armed robberies in Toronto and Brampton this summer. Multiple retail and financial businesses were robbed at gunpoint, and one of them, according to police sources, occurred on TTC property. The weapon, a replica gun, as well as masks were recovered by police during the investigation.
Earlier this summer, police were investigating another robbery on TTC property, which was caught on video. In the video, a woman can be seen chasing another woman through a subway car and, subsequently, fighting over a cellphone.
Our office often receives phone calls from people who have been arrested and charged with robbery, which is a serious violent crime offence. Robbery is defined in s. 343 of the Criminal Code as follows:
Every one commits robbery who
(a) steals, and for the purpose of extorting whatever is stolen or to
prevent or overcome resistance to the stealing, uses violence or threats of
violence to a person or property;
(b) steals from any person and, at the time he steals or immediately
before or immediately thereafter, wounds, beats, strikes or uses any
personal violence to that person;
(c) assaults any person with intent to steal from him; or
(d) steals from any person while armed with an offensive weapon
or imitation thereof.
Pursuant to s. 344(1) of the Code, the maximum penalty for robbery is life imprisonment. There are minimum punishments prescribed where certain conditions are met. For instance, there is a minimum sentence of four years imprisonment if a firearm was used in the commission of the offence. Bodily harm is not a prerequisite to the offence, but punishments are more severe depending on whether there is physical injury (yes or not) to the victim. These harsh penalties make it imperative that you hire a first-rate criminal defense lawyer to defend such charges. Your liberty could depend on it.
We constantly get the question, “Who are the top 10 best Toronto’s Criminal Lawyers for robbery cases?” The right lawyer is the one who knows the law and will use every available resource to raise a reasonable doubt and secure a “not guilty” verdict. Many robbery cases turn on eyewitness identification evidence, which is notoriously unreliable and the source of countless miscarriages of justice. Our office has been successful at overturning many wrongful convictions in the past and we continue those efforts today.
