Markham Homicide & Murder Defence Lawyer

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Someone you love has been arrested for murder in Markham, or you can feel that arrest coming. What happens over the next few days will shape the next twenty-five years, and almost all of it will run through one building: the Newmarket courthouse at 50 Eagle Street West. This page is a map for families. It sets out who does what, where each stage happens, and what you can start building tonight. Kazandji Law defends homicide cases across York Region from our Thornhill office, a short drive up Yonge Street from Markham. The line is answered around the clock: 647-588-3234.

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

The first 72 hours: what is happening right now

By the time an arrest happens, the York Regional Police Homicide Unit has usually been working the file for days, sometimes weeks. The unit investigates homicides across York Region and can be reached at 1-866-876-5423, extension 7865, or homicide@yrp.ca. For a Markham arrest, booking and processing typically run through #5 District at 8700 McCowan Road. What investigators want most in the first hours is simple: statements. From the person arrested, from family, from anyone willing to talk.

Nobody talks their way out of a murder investigation. People try. They sit down to clear things up, and months later a Crown attorney reads their own words back to a jury with a very different colouring. The right to silence exists for exactly this moment. Counsel should be retained before any interview, and every police contact after that should run through the lawyer. That applies to family as well. Officers may want to speak with you as witnesses, and you are allowed to get advice before you say anything.

And do not wait for the courthouse to set the pace. In those same 72 hours the defence should be preserving what disappears fastest: phone video, receipts, the names of everyone who was present, clothing, the state of the scene. Memory fades and footage gets overwritten. A lawyer who starts on day one can hold onto evidence that no longer exists by day thirty.

Why murder plays by different rules: section 469

Most criminal charges in Ontario, including very serious ones, start with a bail hearing before a justice of the peace or a judge of the Ontario Court of Justice. Murder does not. It sits on the short list in s. 469 of the Criminal Code, which takes bail out of the lower court's hands entirely. Only a judge of the Superior Court of Justice can grant release (s. 522(1)).

The onus flips too. On most charges the Crown must show cause why someone should stay in custody. On murder, s. 522(2) reverses that: the starting point is detention unless the defence shows cause why detention is not justified. In plain language, the default is jail. Release has to be earned, and it is earned with preparation.

Two more consequences follow from the same list. The trial court is the Superior Court, presumptively with a jury (s. 471); a murder trial proceeds before a judge alone only if both the accused and the Attorney General consent (s. 473). And because murder is punishable by life, well past the 14-year threshold in s. 535, the defence can request a preliminary inquiry in the Ontario Court of Justice before the case is committed up.

Now the part that matters for a Markham family's daily life. In Toronto, that machinery is spread across the city: case management at the Ontario Court of Justice at 10 Armoury Street, adult bail generally at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre at 2201 Finch Avenue West (murder bail itself goes before the Superior Court at 361 University Avenue), and Superior Court trials at 361 University. Three buildings. In York Region the entire route runs through one address, the Newmarket courthouse at 50 Eagle Street West. The OCJ sits there. The Superior Court sits there. Bail, case management, any preliminary inquiry and the jury trial all happen under one roof. Our Toronto homicide lawyers page walks the three-building version; this page stays in Newmarket, because your case will.

The bail hearing at 50 Eagle Street West: what your family builds

The Superior Court at Newmarket schedules bail hearings and bail reviews in the same courthouse where every later stage will unfold, and its criminal list includes 90-day detention review hearings for people held awaiting trial. So the hearing that decides whether your person waits at home or in a cell happens a few floors from the courtroom where the trial will eventually run.

A murder bail hearing is not quick to prepare, and it is not a formality. Because the onus is reversed, the defence walks in with a complete release plan or should not walk in at all. That plan usually has three parts:

• Residence and structure. Where the person will live, who else lives there, curfew, no-contact terms, and any monitoring the plan proposes.
• Sureties. Adults who pledge money, promise to supervise, and commit to reporting a breach even when it hurts. Courts read sureties hard: their records, their finances, their relationship to the accused, and whether the plan is realistic.
• The evidence behind it. Proof of savings or home equity, employment letters, treatment records where health is part of the plan. Paper, not promises.

A few things families are often surprised to learn. A surety pledges an amount but usually does not hand over cash; an actual deposit is required only in some cases. If conditions are breached, the Crown can move to forfeit the pledged amount after a hearing. Charging a fee to act as a surety is illegal. And under the Ontario Court of Justice's bail practice direction, sureties can attend by audio or video, which matters when a proposed surety works shifts or lives outside York Region.

If detention is ordered, the fight is not over. Superior Court scheduling at Newmarket expressly includes bail reviews, and the 90-day detention review is a further checkpoint while the case moves. Our Markham bail lawyer page covers sureties, plans and variations in more depth.

What the Crown actually has to prove

Homicide is the umbrella term: a person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, they cause the death of a human being (s. 222(1)). Culpable homicide divides into murder, manslaughter and infanticide (s. 222(4)). What separates murder from everything below it is the mental element in s. 229, and that is where most murder trials are actually won or lost.

The usual route is s. 229(a): the Crown proves the person meant to cause death, or meant to cause bodily harm they knew was likely to cause death and were reckless whether death followed. Two other routes exist. Transferred intent under s. 229(b) covers the fatal blow aimed at someone else. Unlawful-object murder under s. 229(c) covers doing something you know is likely to kill while pursuing another unlawful goal.

Causation carries its own rules, and they are less forgiving than people expect. Death is still legally caused even if it might have been prevented by proper treatment (s. 224), even if the immediate cause was treatment itself, applied in good faith (s. 225), and even if the injury merely accelerated a death that disease would eventually have caused (s. 226). Causation fights are real, but they run through those provisions.

Question	Murder	Manslaughter
The mental element	Subjective: the person meant to kill, or meant bodily harm they knew was likely to kill (s. 229)	Objective: a reasonable person would have foreseen a risk of non-trivial bodily harm from the unlawful act
The sentence	Life, mandatory (s. 235)	Life is the maximum; with no firearm there is no minimum (s. 236)
Parole ineligibility	25 years for first degree; 10 to 25 years for second degree (s. 745)	Set by the judge under ordinary sentencing principles

That gap is why the murder-or-manslaughter question dominates so many York Region death cases. If the subjective intent in s. 229 cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the verdict is at most manslaughter. We map that fight rung by rung on our Markham manslaughter lawyer page.

First degree, second degree, and what 25 years actually means

Every murder conviction carries life imprisonment. Section 235 makes the life sentence mandatory for both degrees, so the classification fight is really a fight about parole ineligibility.

Murder is first degree when it is planned and deliberate (s. 231(2)). Contract killings are deemed planned and deliberate (s. 231(3)). Murders of on-duty police officers or prison staff are first degree regardless of planning (s. 231(4)). So are killings caused while committing or attempting certain listed offences: hijacking, sexual assault and its aggravated forms, kidnapping and forcible confinement, hostage taking (s. 231(5)), criminal harassment (s. 231(6)), terrorist activity (s. 231(6.01)), killings for a criminal organization (s. 231(6.1)), and intimidation of justice system participants (s. 231(6.2)). Everything that is not first degree is second degree (s. 231(7)).

Classification	Parole ineligibility
First degree murder	25 years (s. 745(a))
Second degree murder	At least 10 years; the judge can set it as high as 25 (ss. 745(c), 745.4)
Second degree murder with a prior murder conviction	25 years (s. 745(b))

Be clear about what these numbers are. Parole ineligibility is not the sentence. The life sentence never expires; ineligibility is only the earliest point at which the Parole Board can consider release. That is why moving a case from first to second degree, or from murder to manslaughter, is measured in decades of a person's life.

Defences that end the case, and exits that change the label

Self-defence under s. 34 is a complete defence: not guilty. It requires a reasonable belief that force or a threat of force was being used against you or another person, a defensive purpose, and an act that was reasonable in the circumstances. Section 34(2) tells courts what to weigh: how imminent the threat was and what other options existed, each person's role in the incident, whether anyone used or threatened a weapon, the parties' size, age, gender and physical capabilities, the history between them including prior force and threats, and the proportionality of the response. In homicide files, that relationship history is often where the defence is actually built.

Mental disorder is dealt with by s. 16: no criminal responsibility where a disorder made the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act, or of knowing it was wrong. The party raising it must establish it on the balance of probabilities, and it leads to a distinct verdict rather than a conviction.

Intoxication works differently. It is not a standalone defence so much as an attack on murder's specific intent: evidence of serious impairment can leave a jury in doubt that the person foresaw death, which brings the verdict down to manslaughter. Its outer limit is s. 33.1, re-enacted in 2022 after R. v. Brown: self-induced extreme intoxication is no answer to a violent offence where consuming the intoxicants was a marked departure from the standard of care of a reasonable person.

Provocation under s. 232 is a partial defence, and it only ever does one thing: reduce murder to manslaughter. Since the 2015 amendment it is narrow. The victim's conduct must itself have amounted to an indictable offence punishable by five or more years, must have been enough to deprive an ordinary person of self-control, and must have been acted on suddenly, before passion cooled. Insults no longer qualify. Narrow, but in the right case it is the difference between mandatory life and a sentencing hearing with room to argue.

The long middle: keeping the case moving without living at the courthouse

Between bail and trial sits a long middle. Disclosure arrives in waves: scene photographs, pathology, toxicology, cell records, witness statements. There are judicial pre-trials, a preliminary inquiry if the defence requests one, then committal, assignment court and trial scheduling in the Superior Court. Murder files carry heavy expert evidence, so this stretch is measured in months, not weeks.

The practical mercy of the Newmarket courthouse is how little of that middle requires anyone to drive there. Routine criminal appearances run through virtual case-management courts, so counsel can speak to the matter on the daily video lists while you stay at work in Markham. When a date does matter in person, it is one address for everything, with interpreter services available for proceedings on request.

The clock matters too. R. v. Jordan set a presumptive ceiling of 30 months from charge to the end of a Superior Court trial, after subtracting delay caused by the defence. Above that ceiling the delay is presumptively unreasonable, and the Crown must point to exceptional circumstances. Murder prosecutions push against the ceiling because of their forensic weight, which is one more reason the defence has to drive the file forward rather than just attend it.

What your family can do, and what will hurt

Families feel useless in the first weeks. You are not. There is a short list of things that genuinely move the case:

• Show up. Judges notice a full row of family at every appearance, and sureties who attend understand the plan they are signing onto.
• Get surety paperwork ready early: proof of savings or property, letters confirming employment, a supervision plan someone can actually live with.
• Keep a written record of the person's health needs, medications and treatment while in custody, and give it to counsel.
• Funnel everything you learn through the lawyer, including names of possible witnesses. Let counsel decide what matters.

And there is a short list of things that do real damage. Do not contact witnesses or the complainant's family; where conditions or the circumstances prohibit it, that contact can become a new charge and can sink the bail plan. Do not post about the case, the deceased or the police on social media; screenshots outlive good intentions. Do not speak to investigators without advice, even casually, even to help. And never pay or promise anything to a surety; taking a fee for acting as one is illegal.

Duty counsel at Newmarket (905-836-8580) can assist an unrepresented person at a first appearance, and the courthouse hosts the Victim/Witness Assistance Program, which supports complainants and Crown witnesses. Interpreters are available for court proceedings. None of that replaces defence counsel with carriage of a murder file, but it helps to know who is who in the building.

The charges that travel with murder

Homicide files rarely arrive as a single count, and each companion charge follows its own rules:

• Accessory after the fact to murder (s. 240). Helping someone escape after a murder. It carries up to life and sits on the s. 469 list, so bail is Superior Court only, with the same reversed onus.
• Conspiracy to commit murder. Also on the s. 469 list: Superior Court bail and trial.
• Attempted murder (s. 239). Up to life, with mandatory minimums where a firearm is used, but it is not a s. 469 offence, so bail runs through the Ontario Court of Justice at Newmarket. The intent threshold is its own battlefield, covered on our Markham attempted murder lawyer page.
• Manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death. The included and adjacent counts a jury can reach or the Crown may accept, mapped on our Markham manslaughter page.

For the province-wide view of how murder cases move through courthouses outside York Region, see our Ontario homicide lawyers overview.

Under investigation, but no charge yet

Some families find this page before an arrest: detectives have left a card, relatives are being called in for interviews, and everyone can feel where it is heading. This window matters more than any other. Once counsel is retained, contact with the York Regional Police Homicide Unit runs through the lawyer, and that changes the temperature of everything. Interview requests get answered on legal advice instead of fear. If a charge is coming, counsel can discuss arrangements for a surrender rather than an arrest at a workplace or in front of children, and the bail plan starts being built before the first court date instead of after it.

Two rules for this period. First, nobody in the family gives a statement, agrees to hand over a phone, or consents to a search without advice; consent given in a hallway is still consent. Second, nothing gets deleted, cleaned or thrown away. Destroying possible evidence creates new criminal exposure and hands the Crown an argument about consciousness of guilt. Preserve everything and let the lawyer sort out what it means.

The decisions you will face, in order

A murder file feels like chaos, but the decisions arrive in a fairly predictable order. It helps to see them lined up:

1. Counsel, in week one. The choice of lawyer determines everything downstream: how fast the release plan comes together and how the file gets litigated. This is not a decision to defer.
2. When to run the bail application. Because the onus under s. 522 is on the defence, timing is strategy. Running a half-prepared hearing early can be worse than running a strong one three weeks later, and the family's surety work usually sets that timeline.
3. Whether to request a preliminary inquiry. Available on request because murder carries life (s. 535). A prelim lets the defence test key witnesses under oath and pin down the Crown theory; it also adds months. The right answer depends on the file, not on habit.
4. Jury or judge alone. A jury is the default (s. 471); judge-alone happens only if both the accused and the Attorney General consent (s. 473). This decision is made late, with full disclosure read, and it belongs to the accused on counsel's advice.
5. The resolution question. At some point the file answers a hard question: is this a trial about identity, intent or self-defence, or is the realistic fight about the label and the parole-ineligibility number? Honest counsel names that moment instead of letting it drift.

Not one of these decisions is made alone, and none of them should be made in a hurry at the courthouse door. Families who understand the sequence stop being spectators.

Why Markham families call Kazandji Law

Fadi Matthew Kazandji is senior criminal defence counsel, and homicide work is the deep end of that practice. When you retain the firm you deal with him, not a rotating cast. The approach is unglamorous and it works: early expert involvement, disciplined disclosure review, a bail plan built like a case, and honest advice about the difference between a triable issue and wishful thinking.

Four offices serve the Greater Toronto Area. For Markham and York Region files the Thornhill office is the anchor, minutes down the road:

• Thornhill: 7191 Yonge St., Suite 310 (serves Markham and all of York Region)
• Toronto (head office): 180 John St., Unit 320
• North York and Oakville offices by appointment

Consultations are free and confidential, and the phone is answered around the clock. Recent results are collected on our case successes page.

Questions Markham families ask about murder charges

This page is legal information for people facing charges in Markham and York Region, current to July 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create a solicitor-client relationship. Statutes, case law and court practices change, and every case turns on its own facts. For advice about your situation, call Kazandji Law at 647-588-3234. Kazandji Law, 180 John St., Unit 320, Toronto; Thornhill office: 7191 Yonge St., Suite 310.