CARAMANNA Salvatore

Sal Caramanna graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1995 and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1997. Since then, he has practiced exclusively in criminal law as a defence lawyer and has become a prominent member of the criminal defence bar in the Toronto area. He is particularly focused on defending high-stakes and complex cases, representing clients accused of first-degree murder, manslaughter, participation in a criminal organization, conspiracy to traffic controlled drugs, trafficking and importing narcotics, firearms-related offenses, corporate and commercial fraud, sexual assault, aggravated assault, and criminal negligence causing death.

Mr. Caramanna is a courageous and innovative lawyer who has conducted hundreds of trials before all of Ontario's trial courts and in nearly every court in southern and central Ontario. He has been particularly successful in arguing cases before juries. Many of the cases he has defended have been widely publicized.

Mr. Caramanna is a member of the Criminal Lawyers Association, the Toronto Lawyers Association, and a former member of the Peel Lawyers Association. Additionally, he has been actively involved with AIDWYC (now Innocence Canada) as Chair of the International Review Committee from 2008 to 2013, when AIDWYC ceased its international operations. Mr. Caramanna reviewed numerous cases for the IRC and frequently traveled to the United States to meet with wrongly convicted individuals to assist them in their fight for exoneration. He continued to work on several miscarriage of justice cases after the closure of the IRC's international activities and still does. Mr. Caramanna was a founding board member of the AIDWYC Foundation, serving from 2009 to 2011. He also served on the board of the Innocence Network, the U.S.-based organization overseeing the work of numerous Innocence projects, for two and a half years from 2011 to 2013.

Before attending law school, Mr. Caramanna earned an Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto in 1992, where he graduated with a specialist degree in nutrition science, one of the pre-medical programs at the University of Toronto. His background in science has proven particularly useful in defending cases involving forensic evidence and scientific testing.