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Criminal appeals in Toronto run through two buildings that face each other across Queen and University: Osgoode Hall, home of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Ave. Which one owns your case depends on how the Crown prosecuted it, and what happens inside is a fixed sequence of stations, from the notice of appeal to the day the court rules. This page maps that machine, station by station, so you know where your file goes, what each stage demands, and where the time and the arguments actually live.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Updated July 2026.

Two buildings at Queen and University: the Toronto appeal map

Toronto is the only city in Ontario that holds both criminal appeal venues. Every indictable appeal in the province, wherever the trial happened, is argued at Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen St. W., the seat of the Court of Appeal for Ontario (416-327-5020). And summary conviction appeals from Toronto trials are heard by the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Ave., because the Criminal Code sends those appeals to the Superior Court sitting in the region where the case was decided. The two courthouses face each other across the Queen and University intersection. A five minute walk separates two very different appellate worlds.

Which building owns your case was settled long before anyone thought about appealing, by the Crown's election. Most Toronto criminal trials now run at the consolidated Ontario Court of Justice courthouse at 10 Armoury St. If the Crown proceeded summarily there, your appeal crosses to 361 University. If the Crown proceeded by indictment, at the OCJ or the Superior Court, your appeal goes to Osgoode Hall.

Note what the table does not say. It does not matter how serious the case felt, how long the trial lasted, or which level of court heard it. The election governs. Hybrid offences prosecuted summarily appeal to the Superior Court; prosecuted by indictment they go to Osgoode Hall. We confirm the route from the court record on day one, because filing in the wrong court burns time nobody has. The same two deadlines, both 30 days from sentence, and the same basic sequence of stations apply on either track. The stations are where the differences show up, so the rest of this page walks them in order.

Station one: the notice of appeal

Everything starts with a short document that does more work than its length suggests. The notice of appeal identifies who is appealing, what is being appealed, conviction, sentence or both, and on what grounds. It has to be filed in the right registry within 30 days after the day sentence was imposed: rule 8(3) of the Criminal Appeal Rules for indictable matters, rule 40.05 of the Criminal Proceedings Rules for summary ones. Both courts can extend time, under rule 8(2) and s. 815(2) of the Criminal Code respectively, but extensions are discretionary and get harder with every week of delay.

For appellants in custody, both rule sets allow an inmate appeal: deliver the notice to the senior official of the institution and it is treated as filed that day. It is the one filing in the system designed to work from inside a cell, and it preserves the deadline while counsel builds the rest outside.

On the indictable track the notice also has to respect the gates of s. 675. A convicted person appeals as of right on a pure question of law. Questions of fact or mixed fact and law need leave of the court or a trial judge's certificate; any other sufficient ground needs leave; sentence appeals need leave unless the sentence is fixed by law. And if a single judge refuses leave, s. 675(4) allows written notice within seven days to have a panel decide the question. These gates shape drafting. A ground framed loosely as unfairness may need leave; the same complaint framed precisely as a legal error may not. Getting that right at station one changes the entire appeal.

Summary appeals under s. 813 are broader in form: the defendant may appeal conviction, sentence, or certain orders, and the Crown holds mirror rights. The drafting discipline is the same. Grounds pleaded vaguely invite a motion fight later; grounds pleaded with the record in hand set up the factum.

One more thing belongs at this station: a protective notice. Where the merits are still being assessed and the deadline is near, filing a sound notice on time and refining grounds afterward beats litigating an extension application later. We treat the 30 day mark as a hard wall, not a soft target.

Station two: transcripts, appeal book, factum

An appeal is argued on the record, so the record has to exist in reviewable form. This station is where appeals spend most of their calendar life, and almost none of it is visible to the client, which is why we explain it up front.

Transcripts come first. Every relevant word said in the trial courtroom, evidence, rulings, submissions, reasons, has to be transcribed by authorized court transcriptionists, and ordering them is one of the first steps after the notice goes in. Production time depends on the length of the trial and the transcriptionists' queues; a two day trial and a six week trial live in different universes. Nothing else can be finalized until the transcripts land, which is why delay at this station is the most common answer to the question of why appeals take as long as they do.

Then the appeal is perfected: the appeal book assembling the documents the court needs, the transcripts, and the factum, the written argument that does most of the persuading. Appellate judges read before they listen. A factum that frames two or three strong grounds cleanly, ties each one to specific passages in the record, and deals honestly with the weak points is worth more than any hour of oral argument. We treat the factum as the main event and draft it that way.

What should you be doing during these months? Staying reachable, complying with any release terms to the letter, and keeping us informed of anything that might bear on fresh evidence. The station belongs to counsel, but the conduct of the appellant while it runs still matters, especially if release was granted and the Crown is watching.

Where grounds are actually found: reading the record for error

Clients ask what a good ground of appeal looks like. The honest answer is that grounds are found, not invented, and they are found in predictable places in the record.

Rulings on evidence are the first place we read: what was admitted over objection, what was excluded, and the reasoning given. A conviction built on evidence that should never have been before the court is the classic s. 686 legal error. Charter rulings are the second: searches, statements, detention, delay. Where a pre-trial application was dismissed on a legal misapprehension, the conviction that followed may be vulnerable. Third, the judge's reasons themselves. Reasons that misstate the elements of the offence, reverse the burden of proof, or resolve credibility with impermissible reasoning give an appeal court something concrete to grip. In jury trials the equivalent territory is the charge, the instructions the jury worked with.

Notice what is not on the list: the feeling that the judge liked the officer, disliked your witness, or simply got it wrong. Those instincts are sometimes the smoke that leads to real fire, and we treat them respectfully as leads. But the ground itself must be locatable in a transcript line, an exhibit, a ruling, or a paragraph of reasons. That is why the record station matters so much, and why we do not give final opinions on merit until the reasons have been read in full. A disciplined grounds review sometimes ends with advice not to appeal. That advice costs a consultation and saves a year.

Station three: interim release while the appeal runs

A custodial sentence keeps running while the appeal is prepared, so for jailed appellants this station comes first in urgency even though it sits third in the sequence. The application is usually built alongside the notice of appeal, in the same week.

At Osgoode Hall, a single judge of the Court of Appeal decides release under s. 679. For conviction appeals, s. 679(3) requires the appellant to establish that the appeal is not frivolous, that they will surrender into custody in accordance with the terms of the order, and that detention is not necessary in the public interest. The Supreme Court unpacked that last element in R. v. Oland, 2017 SCC 17: the public interest has two components, public safety and public confidence in the administration of justice, and public confidence involves weighing enforceability, the principle that sentences should be served, against reviewability, the principle that no one should serve a sentence an appeal court later sets aside. In practice, the merits drive the outcome. A release application supported by focused, arguable draft grounds reads differently from one that promises grounds to come.

Sentence-only appeals use s. 679(4): once leave is granted, release turns on sufficient merit such that serving the sentence pending appeal would cause unnecessary hardship, plus the same surrender and public interest elements. Every s. 679 release order carries a surrender condition (s. 679(5)), and treating it casually is the fastest way to lose both the release and the court's confidence.

On the summary track, s. 816 governs: an in-custody appellant stays in custody unless the Superior Court makes a release order, again with a surrender condition. One caution about vocabulary, because callers mix these up weekly: bail pending appeal is a different application from trial bail, decided by a different court on a different test. Our Toronto bail lawyers page covers the trial side; this station is strictly post-conviction.

Station four: the hearing room

The hearing itself surprises most first-time appellants. Nobody testifies. There is no jury box in use, no exhibits being marked, no cross-examination. At Osgoode Hall the appeal is argued before a panel of the Court of Appeal; on the summary side a single Superior Court judge hears it. Counsel argue from the record, the judges interrupt with questions, and the whole thing typically occupies a morning or an afternoon rather than days.

What the court is doing is applying standards of review, and understanding them explains almost every question from the bench. Findings of fact and credibility assessments made at trial receive deference; the appeal court will not substitute its own view of a witness simply because it might have seen things differently. Rulings on questions of law receive no deference at all. That asymmetry is why appellate strategy pushes every viable complaint toward legal error, and why an unreasonable verdict argument, which asks whether the verdict is one a properly instructed trier of fact acting judicially could reasonably have reached, is a demanding route rather than a rerun of closing submissions.

Decisions sometimes come from the bench the same day; more often, and almost always in complex matters, the court reserves and releases written reasons later. Either way, by the time argument ends the outcome has usually been shaped far more by the factum and the record than by anything said aloud.

Station five: outcomes under section 686

Section 686 of the Criminal Code sets the full menu of endings for a conviction appeal, and it pays to know the menu before ordering.

The proviso deserves its own sentence, because it decides real appeals: proving the judge made an error is necessary but not sufficient, since the Crown can still hold the conviction by showing the error made no difference. Ground selection at station one, with the proviso in mind, is what protects an appeal from winning the argument and losing the result.

The quieter track: summary conviction appeals at 361 University

Most public attention goes to Osgoode Hall, but for the volume of cases that move through 10 Armoury St. as summary matters, the appeal court that counts sits across the intersection at 361 University Ave. The summary conviction appeal deserves its own respect, because the stakes are rarely small to the person carrying them: a first conviction, an employment consequence, a driving prohibition, a record that follows you.

The structure mirrors the indictable track in miniature. Section 813 gives the defendant an appeal against conviction, sentence, or both, and certain orders. The notice goes in within 30 days of sentence under rule 40.05, and the appeal is argued on the record before a single Superior Court judge, who can grant relief against the conviction or the sentence where the law allows, or dismiss the appeal. In-custody appellants use the s. 816 release mechanism and the rule 40.06 inmate notice procedure.

Two practical differences matter. The single judge format changes advocacy: one decision maker, one set of questions, a factum that can afford to be direct. And because summary files often had short trials, transcripts arrive faster, which compresses the whole timeline; a summary appeal can reach argument while an indictable appeal from the same month is still waiting on the record. And routes beyond this appeal are far more limited, so for most summary files this is the one real swing. It should be prepared like it.

The narrow doors: fresh evidence and ineffective assistance

Off the main line of stations sit two special applications, and they carry the heaviest expectations from callers.

Fresh evidence. Under s. 683(1) the court of appeal may receive new evidence where it considers it in the interests of justice. The controlling test comes from Palmer v. The Queen, [1980] 1 S.C.R. 759, restated by the Supreme Court in R. v. G.D.B., 2000 SCC 22: could the evidence have been obtained for trial by due diligence; is it relevant; is it credible; and could it reasonably be expected to have affected the result. All four matter. Material that was available at trial and left out for tactical reasons fails at the first question. Evidence that emerged afterward, a recantation, a record that did not exist, expert analysis unavailable at the time, can pass, and the Supreme Court has confirmed that the due diligence criterion will be met where the evidence was not led because of the incompetence of counsel.

Which leads to the second door. An ineffective assistance of counsel claim, structured by G.D.B., has a performance component and a prejudice component. The appellant must establish incompetence measured on a reasonableness standard, and a miscarriage of justice flowing from it. The analysis begins from a strong presumption that trial counsel's conduct fell within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, hindsight has no place in it, and where no prejudice is shown the court usually will not even assess performance. Expect your former lawyer to be given notice and an opportunity to respond. These appeals are document-built: the trial file, correspondence, affidavits from you and others, sometimes cross-examination on those affidavits. Done properly they are serious litigation; done casually they fail and take better grounds down with them.

Both doors open from inside a live appeal. The notice still has to be filed within the 30 days, and the applications are developed as part of the appeal, not as a substitute for it.

Sentence appeals with immigration stakes

For permanent residents and other non-citizens convicted in Toronto, the length and structure of a sentence can matter more than the conviction itself, because immigration law attaches consequences at specific thresholds. The Supreme Court addressed the sentencing side in R. v. Pham, 2013 SCC 15: a sentencing judge may take collateral immigration consequences into account, provided the sentence ultimately imposed remains proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. The consequences cannot skew the sentence in either direction, but within a lawful range they are a legitimate consideration. In Pham the Court itself varied two years to two years less a day, a figure tied to the thresholds of its era; the dividing lines in the current immigration statute sit elsewhere, which is exactly why current advice matters.

On appeal this cuts two ways. A sentence imposed without anyone alerting the judge to immigration consequences may be open to variation, and a sentence appeal can ask the court to restructure a sentence with the thresholds in view, always inside the range the offence deserves. Where the six month lines fall today, and what they do to appeal rights before immigration tribunals, is mapped on our page about deportation risk after a criminal conviction. If you are not a citizen, tell your appellate counsel at the first meeting, not after the factum is filed.

When the Crown is the appellant

The machine runs in reverse too. The Crown can appeal an acquittal on indictable matters on a question of law, and can seek leave to appeal a sentence it says is unfit; summary matters carry mirror rights before the Superior Court. Two features of Crown appeals deserve emphasis. First, the remedial powers differ: on a Crown appeal from an acquittal, s. 686(4) lets the court order a new trial, and only where the trial was by judge alone, never a jury, may it substitute a guilty verdict itself. Second, the respondent's timeline is not optional. Once served, you are in the appellate system whether you wanted to be or not, and the factum defending your acquittal deserves the same craft as any appellant's.

We act on both sides of the ledger, for appellants attacking verdicts and respondents defending them, at Osgoode Hall and at 361 University. The reading of a Crown notice, what is truly in play and what is noise, is usually the first thing we provide.

Why Kazandji Law for a Toronto appeal

Appeals reward preparation over performance. The work is reading a record until its weak joints show, framing those joints as questions of law, and writing a factum a busy court can trust. Fadi Matthew Kazandji leads that work personally on every appellate file the firm takes, and declines the files where the honest advice is that no viable ground exists. Screening is part of the service; so is saying no.

Location is a small advantage we use daily: our head office at 180 John St., Unit 320 sits minutes on foot from both Osgoode Hall and 361 University, with offices in Thornhill, North York and Oakville for clients across the GTA. Trial defence in this city runs through our criminal defence practice, and appellate work feeds back into it: lawyers who argue appeals try cleaner trials.

For the province-wide legal framework, see our Ontario appeals lawyers page. If your trial ran at the Newmarket courthouse, our Markham appeals lawyer page covers that geography: Newmarket trials, same rules, different buildings.

This page is general legal information for people dealing with a Toronto criminal case, not legal advice, and reading it does not create a lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the Criminal Code of Canada (current to May 26, 2026), the Criminal Appeal Rules of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the Criminal Proceedings Rules of the Superior Court of Justice and the cited decisions as of July 2026. Appeal rights and outcomes turn on the record of each case. Speak with a lawyer about yours.