David G. Bayliss Professional Corporation

About David G. Bayliss Professional Corporation

David G. Bayliss Professional Corporation is a small criminal defence firm based in downtown Toronto, with a second office in Newmarket. Founder David G. Bayliss earned a B.A. in history from the University of Waterloo in 1979 and a law degree from the University of Toronto in 1982, then articled with criminal defence lawyers Jack Pinkofsky and James Lockyer before being called to the Ontario Bar in 1984. Bayliss later became a partner at Pinkofsky Lockyer, which grew into one of Canada's largest criminal law partnerships, before setting up this practice in 2010. The firm now defends individuals and corporations facing all types of criminal charges, with particular experience in murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, and drug trafficking or possession cases, and a stated focus on Charter of Rights issues.

Much of that career has run alongside wrongful conviction work. Bayliss is a former longtime director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (now Innocence Canada) and a former Toronto director of the Criminal Lawyers Association, and acted with lawyer James Lockyer on the case that led to William Mullins Johnson's exoneration, after 12 years in prison for a murder conviction later overturned. The firm accepts Legal Aid Ontario certificates in certain cases and is a designated member of Legal Aid Ontario's Complex Criminal Case Rate Panel.