In a three-page decision issued Thursday, the Manitoba Court of Appeal granted a joint request by provincial prosecutors and John Paul Ostamas’ defense lawyer to vacate the consecutive life sentences handed down to the now 45-year-old in 2016. Ostamas pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder in the April 2015 deaths of homeless people Miles Monias, Stoney Stanley Busey and Donald Collins. The minimum sentence of 75 years without parole was the longest ever handed down in Manitoba. The legal landscape changed in May when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a section of the Criminal Code that allowed for so-called “parole stacking” in cases involving multiple charges of first- or second-degree murder. Section 745.51 was enacted by the then Conservative federal government and allowed sentencing judges to combine parole eligibility in such cases. It was expected that Manitoba’s supreme court would agree to modify Ostamas’ sentence in light of the SCC ruling, in which the stacking of parole was deemed to violate section 12 of the Canadian Charter which protects people from cruel and unusual punishment. Ostamas will now be eligible to apply for parole until the year 2040 instead of 2090. When news of his appeal broke in June, Ostama’s defense attorney, Ryan Amey, warned that his client would simply have the opportunity to ask for — not necessarily receive — release from prison if the appeal was successful. In compliance with the country’s new law, the Manitoba court simply replaced Ostamas’ consecutive life sentences without parole for 25 years to run concurrently. Nothing else about them changes, ordered by Chief Justice Richard Chartier.
The murdered men were “unfortunate innocents”, the judge said
Bussey, Monias and Collins were each homeless, intoxicated and unable to defend themselves from Ostama’s attacks, the court heard during his sentencing. Monias, 37, was beaten at a bus shelter at Portage Avenue and Main Street and later died at a hospital. Bushie, 48, and Collins, 65, were lured from Hargrave Street and Ellice Avenue and later beaten to death two hours apart. Collins was stabbed and strangled and Bushey had 71 different injuries, a senior Crown prosecutor said. The motive for the killing remains unclear. Ostamas said he was seeking revenge for sexually assaulting his pregnant girlfriend by four men, but police found no evidence of that, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Vic Toews said in 2016. “It would have been four, but I only found three,” Ostamas, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, told a spiritual counselor in prison after his arrest. Handing Ostamas consecutive life sentences at the time, Toews called the men’s murders “three cold-blooded murders carried out with savage brutality.” Ostama’s victims, he said, were “hapless innocents.”
