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Alberta’s top court has overturned a first-degree murder conviction for a man who was sentenced in a fatal 2020 shooting south of Edmonton.
Kardon Demetroff was arrested on May 4, 2020 in the killing of Larry Parker, a 74-year-old landlord whose body was found on a rural road just outside Maskwacis, Alta., on the morning of April 12, 2020.
After a trial in 2022, a jury found Demetroff guilty of first-degree murder, while a woman who was accused alongside him was convicted of manslaughter.
First-degree murder comes with an automatic life sentence, with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. But the Court of Appeal of Alberta has ordered a new trial for Demetroff, with a three-judge panel finding that the trial judge made errors in the way she instructed the jury in several areas.
The Court of Appeal justices say there were issues with the way the jury was told to assess some of what Demetroff said to police, including denying that he was the shooter. He and his co-accused both pointed at each other.
“Here, it was not made clear to the jurors that, if they did not believe the appellant’s exculpatory statements, they could still be left with a reasonable doubt as to his guilt,” the decision says.
“The need for these instructions was particularly acute given that during closing argument, Crown counsel focused on ‘all these lies’ in the appellant’s police statement, and suggested the jury could infer the appellant had shot Mr. Parker in part because of the lies.”
Demetroff will be back in court in Wetaskiwin, Alta., on Nov. 25 to begin the process of scheduling another trial.
Jury ‘insufficiently equipped’ for its role
Parker’s body was discovered a few hours after he’d been called to a Wetaskiwin property by one of his tenants who was complaining about noise coming from upstairs.
Court heard during Demetroff’s 2022 trial that after Parker spoke with the people living there, he went outside and encountered Demetroff and the woman who would be accused alongside him.
The Court of Appeal decision says the pair told police that Parker agreed to drive them somewhere in Wetaskiwin. At some point, Demetroff told Parker that he had a gun and to get out of the vehicle, but Parker didn’t follow him out, and Demetroff told police that he fired once toward the car as it drove away. He denied that the shot hit the victim.
Parker’s SUV was found abandoned about six kilometres away from his body, which was roughly 20 kilometres away from the residence he’d been called to check.
The Crown argued that the killing could be considered first-degree murder because Parker was being confined in the vehicle, and Demetroff was either the “principal shooter,” or he gave the shooter the gun.
The appeal decision also found problems in jury instructions on Demetroff’s actions after the offence. And the judges concluded there was a lack of analysis about whether to admit evidence about “past discreditable conduct” when the jury heard about a separate allegation of violence against the accused and information about his past criminal record.
That, the decision says, contributed to the jury “being insufficiently equipped to perform its role.”
