Nothing like gender equity - only a woman could escape jail for this....

This is so shameful that it's hard to read...

She was the third player in a brutal murder that shocked the country.

But on Thursday, an Alberta woman avoided jail time for driving a 12-year-old girl and the child's much older boyfriend out of the province after the pair had brutally murdered the girl's family.

Kacy Danielle Lancaster, 22, pleaded guilty to obstruction in provincial court in Medicine Hat, Alta., and received a one-year conditional sentence to be served at home.

Hours after a couple and their eight-year-old son were found stabbed to death inside their Medicine Hat home April 23, 2006, Lancaster drove the killers — Jeremy Allan Steinke and the slain couple's 12-year-old daughter — to Saskatchewan in the back of her pickup truck.

Medicine Hat is about 290 kilometres southeast of Calgary.

Steinke and the girl have since been convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.

The girl is Canada's youngest convicted multiple killer.

Lancaster, who testified at both trials, was originally charged with accessory to murder after the fact for allegedly destroying evidence and providing a false alibi.

She was accused of wiping blood splotches off Steinke's truck and hiding it from police in the bushes.

She drove the couple and their friends to Saskatchewan hours after the murders.

They were all arrested in Leader, Sask., on April 24, 2006.

In court Thursday, Crown prosecutor Ramona Robins agreed to reduce the charges to obstruction, because of the difficulty in proving beyond a reasonable doubt Lancaster was an accessory to murder.

Lancaster will serve a one-year conditional sentence at her mother's home, which is down the alley from the house where the killings took place.