Defence lawyers in Halifax say they’re constantly fighting to get items returned to clients long after they were seized by police, often because officers can no longer find them.
Lawyer Kevin Burke says sometimes, getting the items back is more difficult than defending a client.
“There are so many things, items that are taken, during the course of a search warrant that are never returned,” Burke said. “And when they are returned it's very, very difficult to have them returned.”
Defence lawyer Joel Pink says items should be returned without any fuss, but that’s simply not the case.
“I write the police officer, I say, 'OK, the case is over and done with, we are requesting that these exhibits be returned,' the letter goes ignored,” he said.
Burke says getting seized items back from police has been an issue for years. But he’s noticed things have been getting worse.
“It just takes forever,” he said. “In a lot of cases they can't find the exhibits.”
Burke says he's often hunting down things like small amounts of cash, cellphones and computers that may never have been used in a case.
“Those items go to the police station and sit there and sit there and sit there and in a lot of cases the items have been there for years,” he said.
In most cases, police are only legally required to hold onto exhibits for 30 days after a trial, pending an appeal.
“I would hope that there's not a whole lot of stuff needlessly sitting down in our property rooms,” said Staff-Sgt. Don Stienburg of the Halifax Regional Police Special Investigation Unit. “But the other thing I would say is that we're constantly reviewing our procedures for property.”
Burke says it would be helpful to have a person in an administrative role watching these items through the process and overseeing their return, but police say that already exists.
“There's actually three special constables that deal with property, so they're very aware of our policy,” said Staff-Sgt. Stienburg. “As you can imagine, storage of property is a big deal for the police department because we don't have unlimited facilities.”
Both Burke and Pink say in most cases and for most people, fighting for items is simply not worth the legal fees.
“You spend more time trying to get his belongings back than you do on his case half the time,” Burke said.
Both Halifax police and the RCMP say they try to return items as quickly as legally possible.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kayla Hounsell.
