Four convicted multiple murderers in Alberta will be offered the chance to plead their cases to a parole board much earlier after series of appeal decisions on Friday.
Derek Saretzky, Edward Downey, Joshua Frank and Jason Klaus all had their sentence appeals granted by the Alberta Court of Appeal in Calgary.
The men, who murdered eight people as a result of their crimes, had appealed their sentences that originally would have prevented them from seeking parole for between 50 to 75 years, depending on the number of murder convictions each one had.
The decision centered on Alexandre Bissonnette, the gunman who killed six worshipers at a mosque in Quebec City in 2017 and was initially sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 40 years.
In that case, the Supreme Court of Canada decided life sentences with no chance of parole were considered “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore “unconstitutional.”
As a result, Bissonette’s sentence was changed to allow him to be eligible for parole in 25 years.
That means all of the Alberta men will be allowed to apply for parole in the same period of time.