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28
Sep
2025

Understanding Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities When Facing Assault Charges

September 28th, 2025
Understanding Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities When Facing Assault Charges

In Canada, someone who is facing assault charges—or other criminal charges—has several key, basic, and fundamental rights. During court proceedings the accused has some other different rights. There are also some general additional protections. These rights when facing assault charges are what we are going to talk about today in our blog article.

Fundamental Rights

  1. To be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and the Crown must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
  2. To be informed of why you are being arrested and what the charges are.
  3. To remain silent. You are not required to speak to the police nor can you be compelled to testify.
  4. To have a bail hearing within 24 hours if you are remanded into custody and a right to reasonable bail barring some reasonable cause for why you should not have it.
  5. To have a lawyer, to be told you have this right and to be given access to a lawyer.

Next Tier Rights

  1. To be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Police have to obtain proper warrants to perform these tasks.
  2. To not to be arbitrarily detained.
  3. To have translation or interpretation services if needed to understand court proceedings.
  4. To be protected from cruel and unusual punishment.

What we have talked about, above, is not an all-inclusive list, but rather an attempt at a general overview. For further information, we suggest talking to your lawyer. And these rights noted above relate to assault charges and other criminal charges as well.

If you have been charged with assault, please contact Gagan Nahal for a free consultation in Vancouver at (604) 527-4769 as soon as possible. Mr. Nahal’s law practice focuses on criminal defence law, and he has extensive experience in this area of the law. 

Gagan Nahal is a criminal defence lawyer based in Surrey, British Columbia, although he has represented clients across Canada. He works vigorously and tirelessly defending his clients. 

If you have any questions about this article or you would like to talk to Mr. Nahal, please call him directly at (604) 527-4769.