Reluctant court accepts plea bargain in child sex killing

Clearly uncomfortable with a Crown-defence plea bargain put before him last week, Justice Robert Kilpatrick sentenced Shawn Kayaitok Sept. 17 to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 18 years on a reduced charge of second-degree murder.

“This sentence is the end of living as you know it. This sentence is the beginning of your survival,” Kilpatrick told the convicted sex killer.

But Kilapatrick’s sentencing decision suggests the facts in Kayaitok’s case could well have led to a conviction on the more serious charge of first-degree murder.

Kayaitok, now 23, of Kugaaruk, smothered a five-year-old girl to death, had sex with her lifeless body, then hid her corpse in an empty water barrel after luring her to an old shack on the evening of March 6, 2009.

Under the Criminal Code, anyone who commits a culpable homicide in connection with a sexual assault must be convicted of first-degree murder, which carries a minimum parole ineligibility period of 25 years.

Last week, however, Crown lawyer Judy Chan and defence lawyer Sue Cooper presented Kilpatrick with a negotiated plea agreement.

Under it, Kayaitok pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder and to two sexual assaults on two other Kugaaruk children.

Second-degree murder carries a minimum parole ineligibility of only 10 years.

The two lawyers then recommended Kayaitok serve 18 years before being eligible for parole, and a total of seven years for the two sexual assaults.

To support this, they said there is no evidence to prove Kayaitok intended to rape the girl when he first lured her into the shack — and that he had sex with her corpse only after she died.

Kilpatrick responded this week with a highly-skeptical analysis of this theory, saying it “raises troubling questions.”

But he said the law prevents him from increasing the period of parole ineligibility.

“Had this court not been constrained by a joint submission, the period of parole ineligibility imposed today would have exceeded the lawyers’ recommendation,” Kilpatrick said.

And he said he believes Kayaitok did not invite the five-year-old to a dark, unheated shack for an innocent purpose.

“This was not an appropriate location or time for a social visit, or a bedtime story. He was not there to tuck the child into bed,” Kilpatrick said.

In a police statement accepted by both lawyers in an agreed statement of facts tabled last week, Kayaitok said he covered the girl’s mouth and nose with his hand to make her stop screaming, not to kill her.

“This explanation for what happened to [M.] inside the shack is perplexing,” Kilpatrick said.

That’s because Kayaitok kept his hand over the child’s mouth long after she stopped screaming, Kilpatrick said.

And he said that if Kayaitok’s explanation was true, he would have simply let the girl walk out.

At the time, Kayaitok was under a court order forbidding him to have contact with children under the age of 18.

A justice of the peace imposed that condition about two months before the murder of the five-year-old, after Kayaitok was charged with sexual assault in an attempted anal rape of a 14-year-old boy.

Kilpatrick invited the Crown to make a public statement explaining their decision to accept a guilty plea to the lesser offence of second degree murder, even though the law does not require them to do that.

“On matters of such profound public importance it is usually a good practice to do so,” he said.

Kilpatrick also sentenced Kayaitok to 30 months in jail for the attempted rape of the 14-year-old, and 54 months in jail for the anal rape of a seven-year-old boy in 2005.

The attack on the seven-year-old did not come to light until after the murder charge was laid.

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