Alberta Brings Murder Case Against Roy Sobotiak to an End After 36 Years
Almost 36 years after his arrest and 2 months after his release on bail, the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service has stayed the second degree murder charge against Roy Sobotiak.
Arrested on September 27, 1989 for the 1987 murder of 34-year-old Susan Kaminsky, Mr. Sobotiak, then 26, had never had a moment of freedom until his release on bail on May 23 earlier this year. He acknowledged through his counsel then that it would not be easy to adjust to a very different world from what he knew in 1989. “I was 26 when I went in. I am 61 now. Everything will be different.”
After his conviction in 1991 for second degree murder and after losing all his appeals, Mr. Sobotiak tirelessly championed his own cause. He wrote a 1000-page hand-written request to the Parole Board of Canada for a pardon.
In 2021, he was told to write to the Minister of Justice. He did, and Department of Justice officials were sufficiently troubled by his case that they asked Innocence Canada to assist him. We did, and on February 25, 2025, then Minister of Justice Arif Virani quashed the second-degree murder conviction and directed a new trial.
By the time of his release on bail in May, Mr. Sobotiak had spent more years in prison than any other victim of a wrongful conviction in Canadian history, a dubious honour.
Mr. Sobotiak was to have appeared in King’s Bench Court in Edmonton this morning to set a date for his new trial. Instead, Alberta has entered a stay of proceedings, which means that the case is now over, and Mr. Sobotiak is a free man with no restrictions on him for the first time since the day of his arrest in 1989.
In the 2 months since his release on bail, Ms. Sobotiak has been doing well in an assisted living environment in Fort McMurray. The Director tells Innocence Canada that he is welcome to continue living there, and Mr. Sobotiak intends to do so, at least for the time being, as he continues his readjustment to life in the outside world.
James Lockyer said today: “Of all the cases we have worked on, this is by far the longest a wrongly convicted person has been in prison. All of us at Innocence Canada are delighted by today’s development. We wish Mr. Sobotiak all the best and will be there whenever he needs help in the future.”
Katie Clackson of Legal Aid Alberta said: “There is an important lesson to be learned from Mr. Sobotiak’s case. A justice system can go wrong and when it does, it can do irreparable harm.”
Joanne McLean, another Innocence Canada lawyer who worked on Mr. Sobotiak’s case, said: “Innocence Canada has been helping wrongly convicted individuals for 33 years now. We are pleased to have helped Mr. Sobotiak in his quest to prove that he was wrongly convicted”.
For further information, please contact:
James Lockyer Katie Clackson jwilockyer@yahoo.ca kclackson@legalaid.ab.ca
James Lockyer Katie Clackson
jwilockyer@yahoo.ca kclackson@legalaid.ab.ca
416-518-7983 780-719-9204