As Trent Raymond Southwind was about to be sworn in at the first-degree murder trial of Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas, the 26-year-old former gang member stated he would not testify against his co-accused.
Southwind told Justice Shawn Smith that his lawyer advised him to stay quiet. Crown prosecutor Melodi Kujawa attempted a few questions — which were met with silence — before concluding that the witness was not going to cooperate.
In January, Southwind pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with the shooting death of 26-year-old Dylan Edward Robert Phillips. He said he and two others attacked Phillips — who was a stranger to them — at Phillips’s home in the 1400 block of Avenue G North during a drug robbery on Oct. 14, 2016.
Sutherland-Kayseas, 20, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and elected to have a judge-alone trial. Last week, court watched a recorded interview in which the accused told police she fired the shot that killed Phillips. She said it happened during a scuffle and wasn’t planned.
Shaylin Sutherland-Kayseas is on trial at Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench, charged with the first-degree murder in the death of Dylan Phillips on Oct. 14, 2016.
The accused also told police the drug robbery was her own spur-of-the-moment decision, and that her two co-accused had no idea what was going on.
She is charged with first-degree murder not because the Crown believes the killing was premeditated, but because of a clause in the Criminal Code that states a killing is first-degree murder if it is done while committing an indictable offence in association with a criminal organization.
During the sentencing hearing for Southwind, court heard he was a member of the Terror Squad (TS). So was a 15-year-old boy — the third co-accused — who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2017.
Sutherland-Kayseas denied being a Terror Squad member. The Crown presented what it said was evidence to the contrary, including witness testimony, recorded jail calls referencing gang culture and a “TS” tattoo on the accused’s hand.
A photograph of Sutherland-Kayseas’s tattoo submitted as evidence at her first-degree murder trial in Saskatoon.
“That’s sometimes what happens with gang life — no good options,” Justice Smith told Southwind before sentencing him for contempt of court.
Southwind received a one-year sentence on top of his eight-year manslaughter sentence.
OTHER TRIALS INVOLVING CONTEMPT OF COURT
• Nicholas Francis MacLeod sat through hours of his recorded police interviews after refusing to testify at the manslaughter trial of Dustin Trevor Sand in June. Court heard Sand and MacLeod were possibly rival gang members.
• In 2015, Neil Lee Yakimchuk — who had been convicted of the 2004 murder of Isho Hana — refused to testify at the first-degree murder trial of his three co-accused: Kennith Jacob Tingle, Jonathan Kenneth Dombowsky and Long Nam Luu. Yakimchuk received a two-and-a-half-year sentence for contempt of court.