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After 19 years in jail for a crime he claims not to have committed, Landon Karas has been given the opportunity for early release.
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On Thursday, jurors who heard Karas’ request for “tenuous hope” unanimously agreed that the convicted murderer should be able to immediately apply for parole. Karas, 40, has been in custody since his arrest in October 2002 for the first-degree murder of Bonnyville businesswoman Doreen Bradley.
Karas was convicted largely on circumstantial DNA evidence and maintains that he is not the killer.
Ashton Karas, one of Landon’s three younger siblings, said the family is delighted with the news.
“We want this nightmare to end, but there is a lot of joy in knowing that there were people who believed in him,” he said, suppressing the emotion.
The jury reached its verdict around 1 p.m. Thursday after four hours of deliberation. They unanimously agreed that Karas should be able to apply for parole without delay.
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Before the hearing, Karas was eligible for day probation in 2024 and full probation in 2027. Convictions for first-degree murder carry a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Karas’ parole is up to the Canadian Parole Board. There is no guarantee that someone serving a life sentence will ever be released from jail.
Thursday’s decision is the latest in a history that stretches back nearly two decades.
Bradley, 58, was found dead in her rural home outside Bonnyville on July 15, 2002. A&W employees in the city felt something was wrong when she failed to show up for work.
Detectives determined that Bradley had been sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed at least 30 times. The case initially puzzled investigators. There were no signs of forced entry into Bradley’s house. His landline was missing. The weapon used to kill her was never located, nor were two vehicles seen in her home at the time of the murder.
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The RCMP eventually launched a DNA “dragnet” that searched for genetic samples from 58 local men. The researchers hoped the network would help them identify a mysterious DNA profile recovered from semen found on Bradley’s body.
Karas’ father Fred gave a blood sample in hopes of helping catch the killer. His sample revealed that the mysterious DNA profile belonged to a first-degree relative. Fred’s sons were asked to give samples and Landon, then 21, was a match. At trial, a DNA expert testified that the probability of a false match was approximately one in 5.6 billion.
The police arrested Karas on October 18, 2002 after 17 days of surveillance. No additional evidence linking him to the murder was ever identified.
When a jury found him guilty of murder in 2005, Karas thanked his family and concluded: “I want everyone to know that I did not kill Doreen Bradley.”
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Karas finally appealed his convictions to the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. He argument the court should not have admitted the two DNA samples he turned over to the police as evidence because they were involuntarily turned over, and that the case against him was “so weak” that the jury’s verdict was unreasonable. Alberta court fired appeal, while the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Karas eventually filed an application under the Penal Code’s “weak hope” clause, which allows a first-degree murder convict to appear before a jury after 15 years in prison to argue that changes in his circumstances merit leniency. For more than a week, jurors and Judge Paul Belzil heard evidence from prison staff who have worked with Karas, his family members, and Karas himself.
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They also heard statements about the victim’s impact from Bradley’s family and loved ones, describing the pain of her loss. Karas addressed Bradley’s family during her testimony and said, “I want to apologize, but I know that ‘I’m sorry’ seems empty when I don’t accept responsibility.”
He said that while he didn’t kill Bradley, “I was doing a lot of things in my life that were wrong that got me to this point … I became an easy target in that community when a violent event happened.”
“My intention is to move forward in a way that does not cause further harm to anyone,” he told the court. “I don’t want to be the email in the middle of the night: ‘Landon violated (probation), Landon did something dumb’… I won’t be that person to you. I have to do this the right way and not hurt anyone else. “
The jury’s deliberations are secret, so it is impossible to know what role Karas’s declared innocence played in the jury’s decision. Ashton Karas speculated that the jurors may have been influenced by the revelation that Landon suffers from cystic fibrosis and is therefore infertile. He said Landon received the diagnosis in 2016 and believes it casts doubt on the DNA evidence used to convict him.
If Karas is eventually released, he will remain under the supervision of the parole board for the rest of his life.
Reference-edmontonjournal.com