Alberta prosecutors have stayed a murder charge against a man who was imprisoned for more than three decades for the death of an Edmonton woman who disappeared in 1987.
In a news release on Friday, Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization that advocates for wrongful convictions, said the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service (ACPS) has stayed the second-degree murder charge against Roy Sobotiak.
In an email to CBC on Friday, ACPS confirmed “that the matter was stayed.”
Sobotiak, 61, spent more than 35 years behind bars after being convicted for the murder of 34-year-old mother Susan Kaminsky.
Kaminsky vanished in February 1987 and her body was never found.
Sobotiak, who was in his early 20s at the time, was the last known person to see Kaminsky alive.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility of parole for 16½ years in 1991. Since his conviction, he continued to insist his innocence and has never been granted parole.
In May 1994, the Alberta Court of Appeal dismissed Sobotiak’s appeal against his conviction, and his application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was dismissed in 2004.
In February 2021, Sobotiak applied to the federal minister of justice for a review of his conviction.
Under the Criminal Code, a person who has been convicted of an offence and who has exhausted all rights of appeal may apply to the federal minister of justice for a review of their conviction.
Sobotiak was granted a new trial in February by the former federal justice minister Arif Virani, who concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe a “miscarriage of justice” had occurred in the case.
A briefing note by Sobotiak’s legal team stated that the ministerial review hinged on three key issues: the undercover police operation, undisclosed investigative details, and additional forensic evidence linked to the case, some of which was discovered after his conviction.
In response, Alberta Attorney General Mickey Amery applied for a judicial review to contest the decision.
With his previous murder conviction quashed, Sobotiak was considered legally innocent and was granted bail in May.
Sobotiak was released into a sober living house in Fort McMurray and was subject to conditions including a curfew and electronic monitoring for three months.
The release from Innocence Canada stated that Sobotiak was scheduled to appear in court in Edmonton on Friday morning to set a date for his new trial. However, Alberta prosecutors entered a stay of proceedings, effectively ending the case against Sobotiak.
“Mr. Sobotiak is a free man with no restrictions on him for the first time since the day of his arrest in 1989,” said the Innocence Canada release.
“Roy Sobotiak spent more time in prison than any other wrongfully convicted person in Canada has to date,” said James Lockyer, a founding director of Innocence Canada and one of Sobotiak’s lawyers, in an interview with CBC News.
In the news release, Innocence Canada said Sobotiak intends to keep staying at the sober living house for now.
