The Crown is appealing the stay of proceedings in a high-profile cannabis impairment case in Saskatoon.
Provincial court judge Jane Wootten stayed a charge of criminal negligence causing death against Taylor Kennedy on Dec. 13. Wootten ruled that the trial went longer than a limit set by the Supreme Court.
Taylor Kennedy hit nine-year-old Baeleigh Maurice with a truck in 2021 as Maurice crossed a street on her scooter. Kennedy told police at the scene she had vaped cannabis and consumed magic mushrooms the day before.
Kennedy was charged on March 15, 2022. Final arguments in the trial took place Aug. 30, 2024. At trial, defence lawyer Thomas Hynes argued that the charge should be stayed because the case had taken an unreasonable length of time. He said the case had gone six months past the ceiling set by the Supreme Court.
Hynes said he is not surprised by the appeal notice, which was filed Jan. 6.
“The ground of appeal is the judge made a mistake in the delay application and the judge shouldn’t have found a breach of Taylor Kennedy’s right to be tried within a reasonable time,” he said in an interview.
Hynes said this is going to be about more than simply redoing the judge’s math.
“The legal application would be, like, what legally counts as defence delay or what legally counts as an exceptional circumstance?”
In this context, Hynes expects the Court of Appeal to give a lot of leeway to the trial judge to assess whether something was exceptional or not, “because she was there and they weren’t.”