By C1 Staff
CANADA — A man behind bars for shooting and killing three people is saying his “continued incarceration … is unlawful.”
The Star Phoenix reports that Daniel Tuckanow, 30, was transferred from a minimum-security prison to a medium-security facility after he was discovered with a cell phone that his wife had slipped him during one of their conjugal visits.
Tuckanow claims that his “arbitrary” transfer constituted an illegal “deprivation of his liberty.” He continued to say that he should have already been granted parole, stating that there was “no valid penal purpose served by his ongoing incarceration.”
In 2001, a 17-year-old Tuckanow got into a fight with Anthony Akapew and Devin Keewatin while at a party.
He cycled to his uncle’s house to retrieve two Russian-made semiautomatic rifles, then chased Akapew and Keewatin, eventually cornering them and shooting them in the head.
He also turned one of the guns on John C. Davies, who he suspected of witnessing the murders while on a service call.
Tuckanow pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder. Though he was sentenced as an adult, when he entered prison in 2002 he was eligible for release as early as 2009. He was allowed to serve his sentences concurrently, benefitting from a now quashed judicial provision that effectively gave multiple murderers the same amount of jail time as if they had only killed a single victim.
But five years after his first deadline for parole eligibility, Tuckanow remains incarcerated. He has also racked up a lengthy institutional record since entering the correctional system, described as violent toward other inmates and staff members.
He’s also been frequently caught with contraband items.
Edmonton-based judge J.M. Ross dismissed Tuckanow’s claim of illegal incarceration, ruling that his “deprivation of liberty was lawful” and that he had rightly earned the “correctional intervention” administered.