Key ruling expected in June in THC case
Fatal impaired driving trial
A Saskatoon judge will decide on June 7 whether Taylor Ashley Kennedy believed she was compelled by law to tell police about using cannabis and magic mushrooms the night before she hit and killed nine-year-old Baeleigh Emily Maurice, or whether she gave the information freely.
It's the first step of a constitutional challenge being raised by Kennedy's defence team at her provincial court trial, which began in October 2023.
The defence is trying to establish that Kennedy thought she had to offer the information to police when she was questioned in the back of a police car about an hour after the fatal collision.
Kennedy, 29, struck Maurice as the girl entered a crosswalk on her scooter at the corner of 33rd Street and Avenue G around 9 a.m. on Sept. 9, 2021.
She wasn't charged with impaired driving while exceeding the prescribed blood-drug concentration of THC causing death until 2022.
During a blended voir dire, or trial within a trial to deal with constitutional and Charter challenges, court watched Kennedy's recorded police interview.
She told Const. Blake Atkinson that she consumed cannabis at 10 p.m. the night before, and micro-dosed mushrooms around 3 p.m. the day before.
Last week, Kennedy testified on a voir dire that she thought she was legally obligated to provide that information to officers at the crash scene. On Friday, defence lawyer Thomas Hynes argued Kennedy's belief, together with Atkinson's testimony that he told her she was required to give information about the collision, made it a “compelled statement.”
Crown prosecutor Michael Pilon argued Kennedy freely told police about her drug use because she wanted to help Maurice, and that she was never told she was required to do so.
If Judge Jane Wooten rules that the statement was compelled, the defence can proceed with its constitutional challenge. Hynes is arguing that the law that compels someone to make a statement after a collision, for the purposes of justifying a blood demand or oral swab test, breaches a person's right against self-incrimination, and is therefore unconstitutional. Hynes confirmed the defence is essentially arguing that Kennedy's statement, and any testing that was done as a result of it, should be inadmissible.
Based on what she told police, Kennedy was drug tested. She was given an oral swab test at the crash scene and tested positive for THC. Her blood-thc readings have not been spoken to in court, but Hynes confirmed on Wednesday that the results were entered as a Crown exhibit on the voir dire.