No one will serve time in jail for the murder of Roy David Cardinal. His assailant walked out of Slave Lake Provincial Court on July 29 a free woman, after Judge Roger Smith dismissed the manslaughter charge against her.
Cardinal died at age 57 on Apr. 14, 2003, at a trapper’s cabin north of Slave Lake. The cause of death was a stab wound in his chest, delivered during a drunken argument by Julianna Wiyamaipeg.
According to evidence presented by Crown Prosecutor Kene Canton at the trial, Cardinal bled to death from an 18-centimetre-deep stab wound in his upper right chest. He spent the night outside the cabin dead or dying, while four other people – including Wiyamaipeg – slept off the effects of a drinking party.
The case came down to a judgment on what was ‘reasonable force’ under the circumstances. Those circumstances, according to the accused, included a sexual assault and Cardinal’s stubborn refusal to leave the cabin.
The cabin where Cardinal died is located 36 kilometres north of Slave Lake, just off Hwy. 88. According to Wiyamaipeg’s statement – videotaped on July 14, 2003 and replayed for the court – she took a cab there on the evening of the 13th with Roy David Cardinal. She had been drinking in Slave Lake for much of the day, and was “half cut,” she said. Cardinal caught a ride with her, but was never invited to the cabin, she said. He had told her he was on his way to Peerless Lake, but when they got to the cabin, “he just followed us,” she said.
Wiyamaipeg brought “two twenty-sixes,” plus a case of Big Bear beer with her to the cabin. Her common-law husband and two other men were already there. They commenced drinking.
iyamaipeg said over and over again that Cardinal was not welcome at the cabin, and that she and the other men told him to leave many times.
At some point Wiyamaipeg went to sleep, her husband snoring beside her on the bed. The other two men were passed out as well – one on a chair and the other on the floor. She said she awoke to find Cardinal “on top of me,” and trying to take her pants off. She said she put a foot in his chest and pushed him off the bed.
Wiyamaipeg said she told him again to get lost and he started arguing with her. She told him: “I’m warning you, you’re going to get me mad pretty soon if you don’t leave.”
But he wouldn’t leave, she said, “Because he seen the whole case of Big Bear.”
Wiyamaipeg said she did get angry and picked up the knife off the table, where it had recently been used to spread peanut butter and jam.
“I just went like this,” she said, indicating a sharp stabbing motion. “Just to scare him. I never thought he would die.”
Cardinal said, “Ouch!” and put his hand up to his chest or arm and left the cabin quickly. Wiyamaipeg said she assumed he had gone back out to the highway and went back to bed. She told police she did not see any blood, and thought she had just poked him in the arm.
As it turned out, she did more than poke him, and it wasn’t in the arm. The stab punctured a lung and Cardinal never made it further than the yard outside the cabin, where two of the partiers found his body the next morning. They headed for Slave Lake and reported it to police.
The next person to see Cardinal’s body was Slave Lake RCMP Cpl. Peter Quilty. Quilty said he saw a body on the ground outside the cabin, and inside found Wiyamaipeg and her common-law husband in bed. He roused them and asked them if they would accompany him back to the detachment.
“Where’s Roy?” he asked Wiyamaipeg.
“Roy who?” she said.
“Roy David,” Quilty said.
“He left to go to Peerless,” she said.
While locating her socks, Wiyamaipeg looked out the window and saw Cardinal’s body.
“There he is there,” Quilty said she told him.
Before leaving, Wiyamaipeg asked Quilty if she could feed her dog, whose hut was on the same side of the house as Cardinal’s body. Quilty said he had Const. Cook take care of it.
Looking at the body again on the way out of the cabin, Wiyamaipeg said, “I thought he went to Peerless.”
Back at the detachment, Wiyamaipeg spoke unhesitatingly, and apparently honestly, in her statement to Const. Gary Letoski of the RCMP’s K Division Major Crimes unit. She sat with her arms folded, only moving them to demonstrate how she “poked” Cardinal with the knife. She didn’t seem upset or particularly worried, even laughing a few times at something she found funny in her testimony.
In his summation, Crown Prosecutor Canton pointed out that a person doesn’t have to intend to kill to be guilty of manslaughter. He said Wiyamaipeg may have only intended to poke Cardinal in order to scare him off, but when you thrust a deadly weapon at somebody and they end up dead because of it, you’re guilty.
Defense Counsel Ernie Sillito saw things differently.
“She was sexually assaulted,” he said. “And he stays there. It’s her home. She’s trying to get him out of there. She has a right to use force to that end.”
Judge Smith agreed, and said it came down to whether the test of reasonable force should be ‘subjective’ or ‘objective.’ In other words, does the court decide what was reasonable under the circumstances (objective), or does the court accept the accused’s judgment of what was reasonable at the time? Smith said he thought it would be “stupid” for the court to assume it knew better in this case.
“He was a trespasser,” Smith said. “He made it quite clear that he was not going to leave. In this case force was minimal.
“The charge is dismissed.”

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