The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Murder accessory case to go to trial
Prosecution files preferred indictment
The Crown has filed a preferred indictment to send an Annapolis County woman directly to trial in Nova Scotia Supreme Court on allegations of trying to help her former boyfriend escape justice after a killing in Halifax in July 2019.
Miranda Lynn Taylor, 22, of Deep Brook was arrested last summer and charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder and two counts of intimidating a justice system participant.
Taylor elected to be tried by a Supreme Court judge alone. A preliminary inquiry was supposed to be held in Halifax provincial court next October to determine if there was sufficient evidence to procced to trial.
But prosecutor Sarah Kirby announced in provincial court Tuesday that the Crown was using a preferred indictment to send the matter straight to trial without a preliminary hearing.
Taylor will be arraigned on the indictment in Supreme Court in Halifax on May 27. Lawyer Sarah White will be expected to enter pleas for her client and begin the process of setting trial dates.
Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Kaz Henry Cox, 42, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Triston Reece.
Reece, 19, was shot in a car on Scot Street in west-end Halifax on the night of July 26, 2019. He died in hospital after midnight.
Cox was arrested in November 2019 at the Dartmouth jail, where he was in custody on other matters, and charged with murder. His jury trial in Supreme Court is set for five weeks beginning May 9, 2022.
Cox has been representing himself in court since firing his first two lawyers in April 2020 but recently retained Allison Craig of Toronto as counsel.
Last fall, Taylor applied to have the murder accessory charge quashed in Supreme Court, claiming the Halifax Regional Police special constable who swore the charge did not have reasonable and probable grounds to believe she had committed the offence.
Justice Kevin Coady heard the application in January and dismissed it in February. He said he was satisfied the special constable, although not involved in the investigation, had probable grounds when she swore the charges against Taylor based on what she had read in the investigators’ report.
The report disclosed police believed Taylor cut and dyed Cox’s hair in August 2019, created a Facebook account for him under the name Gibby Cox in October 2019, and posted excerpts of the evidence against him on that Facebook page in January 2020 to try to get two principal witnesses “all riled up.”
In his decision, Coady said the investigators’ report “leads me to conclude it is highly unlikely Ms. Taylor’s conduct was for an innocent purpose. Should I be in error, I am fully satisfied that she was wilfully blind."
This winter, police also charged Cox with intimidating the same two people. He will stand trial on those charges next month in Dartmouth provincial court.
Taylor is free on $40,000 bail with conditions of house arrest. She is prohibited from having contact with Cox, the alleged victims of the intimidation and 25 other potential Crown witnesses.