Appeal Court cuts sentence in half for Alberta battered woman who killed her husband
CTV
The Alberta Court of Appeal has cut in half the 18-year prison sentence for an Alberta woman who admitted to shooting her husband in the head and dumping his body in a pond.
The Alberta Court of Appeal has cut in half the 18-year prison sentence for an Alberta woman who admitted to shooting her husband in the head and dumping his body in a pond.
Helen Naslund pleaded guilty in 2020 to manslaughter in the September 2011 death of Miles Naslund, who was 49, on a farm near Holden, Alta., about 100 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.
An agreed statement of facts said the husband had a domineering pattern of abuse against his wife.
The trial judge accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence in the matter of sentencing, but in a split decision the Alberta Court of Appeal has said the length was unfair. One judge on the three-member panel said it was fit.
“The 18-year joint submission proposed by counsel and accepted by the sentencing judge in this case is so unhinged from the circumstances of the offence and the offender that its acceptance would lead reasonable and informed persons, aware of all the relevant circumstances ... to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down,” wrote Justice Sheila Greckol in a decision released Wednesday.
The court imposed a nine-year sentence, minus time already served.
Naslund's appeal of the sentence argued that she feared for her safety, but didn't want to leave the marriage out of concern for her children and because of her depression.
