THC driving charge stayed in Saskatoon crash that killed Baeleigh Maurice

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A provincial court judge has found there was an unreasonable delay in the trial for a Saskatoon woman who hit and killed nine-year-old Baeleigh Emily Maurice.

On Friday, Judge Jane Wootten stayed Taylor Ashley Kennedy’s charge of driving with a blood-THC level higher than the legal limit, causing death. She ruled that after deducting the of court delays caused by the defence, the Crown exceeded the Supreme Court of Canada’s established time frame for how long a case should take between charges being laid and the trial’s conclusion.

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A stay of proceeding means the charge will be dropped unless new information reopens the case within one year.

Kennedy was driving a truck when she struck Maurice while the girl was in a crosswalk on her scooter at the intersection of 33rd Street and Avenue G around 9 a.m. on Sept. 9, 2021.

She was charged in March 2022. Her trial began in October 2023. Most of the trial was in a voir dire to determine the admissibility of evidence, and to hear several charter applications from the defence.

Defence lawyer Thomas Hynes argued that Kennedy was denied a trial within a reasonable time due to a net delay of 23 months — attributed to the Crown — between the time charges were laid and when delay arguments were made in August.

The Supreme Court’s R. v. Jordan decision requires provincial court trials to conclude within 18 months of charges being laid, unless the Crown can justify “exceptional circumstances” for its role in the delay.

Crown prosecutor Mike Pilon argued that some of the delay should be attributed to a COVID-related backlog, as well as court time spent on rendering decisions on several constitutional and charter challenges.

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“The Crown could not point to any exceptional circumstances that otherwise justified how long the case took. In those circumstances, the judge’s only option under the law was to stay the proceeding,” Hynes said.

“The defence maintains that even if the judge had not stayed the charge for delay, the judge would have gone on to find the police had violated several of Ms. Kennedy’s charter rights during the initial investigation, such that the judge would have gone on to exclude key evidence against (her).”

Officers at the crash scene administered an oral fluid test followed by a blood test after Kennedy told an officer that she used cannabis and micro-dosed psilocybin the night before the crash.

RCMP said charges weren’t laid until 2022 because of pandemic-related toxicology result delays at the RCMP lab. It was the first time anyone had been charged with driving with a blood-THC level higher than the legal limit causing death in Saskatchewan.

Hynes argued that a series of breaches — including not providing Kennedy the right to speak with a lawyer in a timely manner and the delayed collection of her saliva sample — led to the roadside blood test being unconstitutional, and the results inadmissible.

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In a prior decision during the trial, Wootten ruled that officers did not force Kennedy to disclose her drug use.

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