Four men, each convicted of at least two counts of first-degree murder, have earned the right to be able to apply for parole before they were asked for their initial sentences.
Edward Downey, Joshua Frank, Jason Klaus and Derek Saretzky were all allowed their sentencing appeals in decisions made at the Alberta Court of Appeal in Calgary on Friday.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada had again referred the Frank and Klaus cases to the Alberta Court of Appeal.
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The move came after a unanimous decision by Canada’s highest court last month in the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, who shot and killed six people at a mosque in Quebec in 2017.
The Supreme Court ruled that Bissonnette can apply for parole after 25 years instead of having to wait 40 years, as determined by the judge at the original trial.
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2:12 The Supreme Court of Canada rules life without cruel and illegal parole The Supreme Court of Canada rules life without cruel and illegal parole – May 27, 2022
The court called for a provision in the Penal Code, which meant several murderers could have to wait 50 years or more to apply for parole, degrading and incompatible with human dignity, and overturned it.
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Balfour Der, Saretzky’s lawyer, told Global News that in his client’s case, Friday’s decision means the period of non-eligibility for parole has been reduced from 75 to 25 years.
“There were three counts of first-degree murder,” Der said. “Each had a 25 – year conditional disqualification period.
“The trial judge made them run consecutively, but due to recent changes to the law, this part was unconstitutional: making consecutive periods of disqualification from parole.”
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Der said his client’s appeal did not require a physical hearing on Friday because “the sentence had to be reduced.”
Der noted that he had believed it was a cruel and unusual punishment “for someone to spend so much time without being able to be eligible for parole.”
“How do we know what someone will be like in 25 years or 30 years or 50 years? Trying to predict the future today, I thought it was unfair because people can change and we should never take away all hope from people, even those who have committed the most serious crimes, because it is part of our Canadian fabric that we always have the ‘hope that someone can be rehabilitated’.
Saretzky was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the 2015 murders of Terry Blanchette, his young daughter Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette and Hanne Meketech in Blairmore, Alta.
Frank and Klaus were convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the 2013 death of Klaus’ father, sister and mother in central Alberta.
Downey was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the 2016 deaths of Sara Baillie and her five-year-old daughter Taliyah Marsman.
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In 2011, the federal government enacted legislation that allowed judges to order murderers to serve consecutive periods of disqualification for each offense if they murdered more than one person.
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–With archives by Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.