A lawyer for Edmonton police says the specific facts of a child’s horrific homicide – coupled with mounting frustration with Alberta’s Crown Prosecution Service – led police to take the exceptional step of asking provincial justice officials to intervene in sentencing for the child’s killer.
Edmonton Police Service lawyer Megan Hankewich said officers learned “by happenstance” that there was a plea deal happening in the case Wednesday, in which the child’s stepmother would plead guilty to manslaughter and receive an eight-year sentence.
Ms. Hankewich said the eight-year-old’s homicide “remains one of the most horrifying cases of child abuse, and ultimately death from abuse, that our police service has ever seen.”
“This child deserved a zealous and fearless prosecution, if only to give her a touch of justice in death which eluded her completely in her too short life,” she said.
The stepmother had originally been charged with first-degree murder, which was reduced to second degree after a preliminary hearing. On Wednesday, she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, though her sentence is yet to be determined. In court, Crown prosecutor Terry Hofmann said there was no agreement on the length of a prison term.
Neither the woman, the child nor the child’s relatives can be named, because of court-ordered publication bans intended to protect the identities of the woman’s other children.
Edmonton police publicly challenge Crown prosecutors, demand manslaughter plea deal is scrapped
Reading from an agreed statement of facts, Mr. Hofmann told court the girl, identified only as NN, showed signs of serious long-term abuse and neglect when she died after a final, fatal head injury in April, 2023.
Mr. Hofmann said the injury may not have been fatal if the child had received medical aid, and had not already been suffering a multitude of other previous injuries and traumas – including numerous broken bones in various stages of healing, and sepsis from an infected tooth.
Instead of seeking help for the child, the child’s stepmother called several other people for assistance in disposing of her body. The child’s remains were later found in a hockey bag on Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alta., just over an hour south of Edmonton.
As facts of the girl’s numerous injuries were recounted in court, members of her family wept and moaned. The child’s grandmother whispered, “That’s not manslaughter.” Many wore T-shirts with photos of the little girl, or clutched lockets with her picture.
The girl’s stepmother sat silently in the prisoner’s box, a long curtain of hair covering her face. She spoke only to confirm the manslaughter plea, which was accepted by the court.
Earlier this week, after learning of a possible plea deal, Interim Chief of Police Warren Driechel sent a letter written by Ms. Hankewich to the province’s assistant deputy minister in charge of Crown prosecutors, Kim Goddard.
In the letter, Ms. Hankewich asked Ms. Goddard to review and intervene in the case, saying that allowing “this plea deal to go ahead would be to bring the administration of justice into disrepute and constitute a significant miscarriage of justice.”
The letter says if the plea deal proceeds, police will be releasing “significant information” about the case to the public “so they can properly assess whether this prosecution and plea agreement were conducted appropriately, and advocate in the public forum for a stronger prosecution service.”
Mr. Hofmann did not directly mention the police letter in court, but said there was no joint submission on sentencing or agreement for an eight-year term, contradicting what police believed was to be the outcome of the case.
Ms. Hankewich said if police information about the plea deal is wrong, she expects Ms. Goddard would have corrected it in their correspondence earlier in the week.
“So I don’t know why that didn’t happen today. I can’t read their minds,” Ms. Hankewich said. “We found out in court, as everyone else did, that that wasn’t going to happen today.”
The stepmother’s lawyer, Robert LaValley, did not return a request for clarification about whether there had previously been an agreement on sentencing. The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service has declined to comment on the case while it is before the courts.
A sentencing hearing is expected to take place later this year or in early 2026. No date has been set.
Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, members of the girl’s family said they believe the girl’s killer should have gone to trial for murder.
“The Crown is supposed to be our voice. The Crown is supposed to be the voice for [the child] and they’re not listening to us. They’re silencing us,” one of the child’s aunts said.
The relatives say they didn’t even know the woman was entering a plea on Wednesday, and only learned about it from news stories after the police letter was released.
“We cried because, finally, somebody is hearing us, is on our side, somebody’s hearing our voice,” another of the child’s aunts said. “Somebody’s able to speak up for us, since we were silenced as her family.”
But while the child’s family say they are grateful for the police advocacy, lawyers and legal scholars around the country say they’ve never seen police in Canada intervene so publicly in a criminal prosecution, and worry about the precedent it could set.
“The prosecution is not there to do the bidding of police,” said Brandon Trask, an associate professor of law at the University of Manitoba and a former prosecutor. “If such interference from police becomes a norm, it will start affecting the resolution of cases, and also public confidence in our administration of justice.”
Salematou Camara, a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer, said the situation also causes concerns for the defence.
“No one is saying that police can’t comment on legal cases. But at the end of the day, they’re not legal experts,” she said. “If defence lawyers now have to also worry about how their clients need to be protected from police letters like this, then it’s a very slippery slope for the courts indeed.”
With a report from The Canadian Press