2 weeks Ago By Ari Yanover
Alberta Attorney General Mickey Amery is fighting his federal counterpart’s decision to grant a new trial to a convicted murderer who’s spent 35 years behind bars, arguing Justice Minister Arif Virani did not provide enough information supporting his conclusion that Roy Allan Sobotiak may have been wrongfully convicted. Alberta Justice last week filed a federal court application for a judicial review of Virani’s order granting Sobotiak a new trial for the 1987 death of Susan Kaminsky. Virani reviewed the case under section 696 of the Criminal Code and found there is a “reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred.
” But Amery says Virani’s notice to Alberta, which will be responsible for Sobotiak’s new trial, did not adequately explain how he reached that conclusion. It said Virani’s single-page decision said only that he had “thoroughly reviewed the matter.” “Mr.
Sobotiak was convicted by a jury of his peers and all his appeals were dismissed,” Alberta Justice lawyer John-Marc Dubé wrote in the federal court application. “Directing a new trial after determining there is a reasonable basis to concluding a miscarriage of justice likely occurred is an extraordinary remedy. The public is entitled to receive reasonable, sufficient, intelligible and transparent reasons for the minister’s decision.
” Alberta is asking the federal court to toss Virani’s decision and order him to “provide written reasons that are transparent, intelligible and justified.” Police charged Sobotiak with first-degree murder in 1989, two years after Kaminsky went missing following an evening with Sobotiak and his mother. Sobotiak — who Kaminsky once babysat — was in his early 20s and was the last person to see Kaminsky alive.
Her body has never been found. Jurors convicted Sobotiak of second-degree murder in 1991 after a trial that hinged in part on video of him admitting to an undercover police officer he killed Kaminsky. Sobotiak maintained his innocence and appealed his convictions to the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.
The former was dismissed in 1994, while the Supreme Court denied him leave to appeal in 2004. He has never been granted parole . In 2021, Sobotiak applied for a review under the Criminal Code’s section 696, which allows anyone who has exhausted their appeals to apply to the federal minister of justice to examine whether a “miscarriage of justice” occurred in their case.
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