Supreme court rejects appeals from Alberta ranchers who killed metis hunters

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Appeals from a father and son who stalked and killed two Metis men in northeastern Alberta have been dismissed.

The Alberta Court of Appeal on Monday issued decisions in the cases of Roger Bilodeau and his son Anthony Bilodeau, who were convicted of the 2020 murders of Jacob Sansom and Morris Cardinal near Glendon.

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Roger Bilodeau was found guilty of manslaughter in both deaths for initiating a pursuit of the two men, while Anthony Bilodeau was convicted of manslaughter and second-degree murder for shooting Sansom and , on Cardinal.

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Roger Bilodeau was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was recently granted parole. Anthony Bilodeau is serving life without the possibility of parole for 13 years.

The two later launched appeals against their convictions. Anthony Bilodeau’s appeal was unanimously rejected by the three-judge panel on Monday, while Roger Bilodeau’s case was dismissed 2-1, making an appeal to the Supreme Court increasingly likely. Judge Dawn Pentelechuk was the dissenting judge.

Sarah Sansom, Jacob Sansom’s widow, said she was relieved that the accused would not face trial either.

“As Roger and Anthony’s appeals have been rejected, it is a huge victory for us,” she said in a message. “We’re hopeful that if Roger takes it to the Supreme Court, they’ll deny his request for a retrial.”

Anthony’s case

The deadly chase on March 27, 2020, began with “Roger Bilodeau’s unfounded belief that the victims were thieves,” the appeals court said.

Bilodeau and his younger son, Joseph Bilodeau, set off in their truck that night after seeing Sansom’s truck on the road near Bilodeau’s farm. The victims, an uncle and nephew out hunting and visiting loved ones, were chased for three kilometers at speeds that reached 152 km/h. The chase continued after Sansom made a U-turn to try to escape his pursuers.

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During the chase, Bilodeau called his older son, Anthony Bilodeau, and asked him to bring a gun. He said he thought they were after “thieves”.

The pursuit ended at a T-intersection when Sansom stopped and exited the vehicle. Roger Bilodeau tried to hit him with his truck, telling RCMP he wanted to “smoke” Sansom because he was “crazy.” Sansom smashed the passenger side window of Roger Bilodeau’s truck with his fist before Anthony Bilodeau arrived and killed both men. Their bodies lay on the road until a passerby found them the next morning.

Both Bilodeaus claimed they were stressed by rural crime and perceptions of ineffective RCMP response times. They testified they acted in self-defense — a claim jurors ultimately rejected.

Anthony Bilodeau’s appeal alleged that Court of King’s Bench Judge Eric Macklin improperly instructed jurors on the law of self-defense. His lawyers, Deborah Hatch and Caitlin Dick, also argued that Macklin erred in limiting Bilodeau’s ability to call expert evidence about the “human stress response” and local perceptions of rural crime.

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As for self-defense, Anthony Bilodeau argued that Macklin erred when he restricted jurors from relying on evidence about “what Roger said and (Anthony) heard right before he got to the scene of the shooting.” The defense argued that comments Roger made to Anthony during the phone call “were critical to establishing self-defense.”

However, Court of Appeal judges Michelle Crighton, William de Wit and Alice Woolley did not find that Macklin’s jury charge was so limiting.

“(Anthony) testified about what he heard on the phone call and how it affected him,” the court said. “At no time did the trial judge instruct the jury that they could not consider this evidence.”

The court also found that none of Macklin’s rulings limited Anthony’s ability to make a “full answer and defense.” Macklin was right to exclude the testimony of an expert witness who trains “police officers and civilians to respond appropriately to dangerous and dynamic situations,” the court found, as well as barring a Bilodeau family neighbor — a former RCMP officer — from to opine on rural crime rates and RCMP response time.

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“Appellant does not indicate what material evidence was excluded,” the appeals court wrote.

Roger’s case

Roger Bilodeau did not directly kill any of the victims. Instead, he was convicted as a party to the offenses under Article 21 of the Penal Code “for forming an intention in common with Anthony to accomplish an unlawful purpose”, the appeal court concluded.

Roger Bilodeau’s appeal focused on whether Macklin improperly instructed the jury on the law of establishing an “unlawful common purpose.”

Writing for the majority, Court of Appeal judges Frans Slater and Jolaine Antonio found nothing in the jury instructions that unreasonably prejudiced Roger’s right to a fair trial.

Although there were some legal errors, “many” ultimately benefited Roger Bilodeau, raising the bar for the Crown. “There was no substantial error or miscarriage of justice,” they wrote.

However, Pentelechuk found that the issues were important enough to merit a new trial.

She noted that the Crown had argued that the common unlawful purpose evidenced by the phone call was the possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and assault. The legal elements of those crimes were considered in the jury instructions, Pentelechuk said.

This “created a real risk that the unlawful common purpose alleged by the Crown … would merge into the secondary offense (murder).”

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