Trio found guilty in 2012 killing of young father denied appeal

Court upholds first-degree murder convictions that resulted in life sentences with no parole for 25 years

The Alberta Court of Appeal has upheld the convictions of three people who killed a young Calgary dad to settle a custody fight.

Sheena Cuthill, her husband Tim Rempel, and his brother Wilhelm are serving automatic life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years for their roles in the 2012 murder of Ryan Lane.

Lane had opposed Cuthill’s legal application to gain sole guardianship of their four-year-old daughter.

A jury found the brothers lured Lane, 24, from his father’s northwest Calgary home, killed him and then torched his remains in a burn barrel near Beiseker, where Tim Rempel and Cuthill lived.

Cuthill and the Rempel brothers each appealed their first-degree murder convictions following the April 2016 verdicts.

Cuthill’s appeal argued that cryptic text messages she exchanged with her husband should not have been admitted into evidence on the basis of spousal privilege. The incriminating texts that were recovered by police suggested the pair were planning to kill Lane.

In a written ruling Monday, the three-member appeal court panel noted that recent parliamentary amendments are intended to restrict, rather than enlarge, the scope of spousal privilege.

“With respect, we cannot disregard these unanimous statements of law and engage in a statutory interpretation frolic of our own,” the justices wrote.

Tim Rempel’s appeal challenged trial Judge Alan Macleod’s decision to rule inadmissible a letter from Wilhelm, in which he accepted vague responsibility for Lane’s death while suggesting his brother and Cuthill would “walk away from this nightmare.”

“In the end, it is a self-serving statement, not a meaningful admission against penal interest of a kind infused with the degree of reliability necessary to establish its admission,” the justices wrote of the letter.

The justices also rejected Rempel’s argument that the jury’s verdict was unreasonable and that Macleod’s explanation of his lawyer’s position had a “far harsher tone” than that of the Crown.

Also dismissed was Wilhelm’s contention that Macleod’s charge to the jury was fatally flawed.

“It is our view that the evidence incriminating Wil in this case was so overwhelming that a reasonable jury properly instructed would inevitably have convicted,” the justices wrote.

In the end, it is a self-serving statement, not a meaningful admission against penal interest.