(file photo/CKOM News Staff)

By Susan McNeil

Appeal denied

Melfort man loses appeal on decade long criminal supervision order

Nov 21, 2023 | 2:07 PM

Gerry Michael Parfitt of Melfort was not successful in trying to have the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal stop another judge’s order that he be supervised for 10 years following his release from prison.

According to a recently released decision from the Court of Appeal, Parfitt was convicted in 2015 of breaking and entering and assault causing bodily harm along with other crimes from an incident in Tisdale in 2014.

Parfitt had gone to collect a drug debt and, while he claimed he had done so in a peaceful manner, the two people he was collecting from had different stories and the front door of the home had been kicked in.

He was then declared a dangerous offender and given a 10-year sentence in jail along with another decade of community supervision after being released.

He appealed and in 2019, a judge changed his designation to long-term offender with a two-year stint in jail but kept the 10-year long-term supervision order (LTSO).

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In his comments in 2019, the judge found that unlike previous releases, Parfitt’s recent behaviour had improved and factors like membership in a gang and substance abuse had been ameliorated.

He also noted that Parfitt fell back into troublesome behaviour while not being supervised.

Parfitt served all of his two years in jail, was released in April 2023 and is once again living in Melfort.

When he appealed his LTSO, Parfitt was working full-time as a construction safety officer and doing well, but the three appeal court judges also weighed in his past criminal behaviour.

Along with the home invasion, he has committed violence against several domestic partners, threatened to torture or kill people, possessed banned weapons, committed an aggravated assault on his mother and used a vehicle to commit assault.

Testimony from a forensic psychiatrist showed Parfitt to have a high risk to reoffend but also having the intelligence to make changes in order to reduce the risk.

The doctor also said that Parfitt needed a slow reintegration into the community in order to help reduce the risk.

While they kept the 10-year LTSO intact, the judges noted that a path to having the length reduced in the future still exists through an application to Court of King’s Bench, should Parfitt be able to show that he no longer is at risk of re-offending.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com