David Butcher, KC began his career as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice in 1985. He practiced both criminal and civil litigation at a regional firm between 1989 and 2003, and then became one of the founders of what became Wilson Butcher. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2010. He joined Martland & Saulnier as Associate Counsel in 2025.

David is a senior barrister with a broad practice involving all aspects of the criminal justice system. He has appeared in all courts in British Columbia and Alberta, and in Manitoba, Ontario, Nunavut and the Yukon, and in the Supreme Court of Canada. Among his notable cases are R. v. Stone, [1999] 2 SCR 290, the leading case on automatism in Canada, and R. v. Lavallee, Rackel and Heintz, 2002 SCC 61, in which the Supreme Court struck down the law-office search provisions in the Criminal Code. He has defended a wide spectrum of criminal and regulatory offences, ranging from murder to tax evasion, and has acted for police officers and police agencies in hundreds of civil and administrative proceedings.

David is a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Attorney General of British Columbia. In that capacity, he has prosecuted serious cases involving public officials, and other crimes, including murder. For more than two decades, he taught Advanced Advocacy at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. He has been appointed by the Court to act as a referee, and as a Commissioner to take evidence overseas. He has acted as counsel on a number of public inquiries, including the RCMP Public Complaints Commission Inquiry into the APEC conference, the BC Utilities Commission Review of the Kemano Dam Project, the Braidwood Inquiry into the Death of Robert Dziekanski, and the Cullen Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia. Although much of David’s work has been in the public eye, his best work has been in cases that have been resolved before they were made public by the commencement of litigation.

Today his practice includes the defence of claims and charges against police agencies and individual police officers; claims and charges against corporations arising from industrial accidents and deaths; allegations of professional misconduct; and white collar crimes such as fraud and tax evasion