Man who pleaded guilty in Dartmouth beating death freed on time served

A 60-year-old longtime criminal with a history of violence who stomped to death a defenceless man in January 2018 over what a prosecutor says was a misunderstanding walked out of a Halifax courthouse on Friday a free man.

Less than an hour after being sentenced to time served for manslaughter, Gregory Maxwell Purvis was released by sheriffs at the Law Courts in downtown Halifax, loading into a pickup truck boxes of belongings accumulated during his seven years in pretrial custody.

Purvis pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter in the death of Derek Miles, 42, after Nova Scotia's highest court overturned a previous conviction for second-degree murder due to legal errors made by the judge at trial.

The case hinged on a number of "unsavoury" witnesses who prosecutor Rob Kennedy said have become less co-operative, making a murder conviction at a new trial less likely. Given that, the Crown decided to accept a guilty plea to manslaughter.

"The Crown is under an obligation to assess the realistic prospect of conviction throughout a criminal prosecution," Kennedy said outside the courtroom.

"In this case, there has to be a quid pro quo when we see weaknesses in the Crown's case. In this case, we determined that was an appropriate resolution."

The Crown and defence jointly recommended an 11-year sentence, which was accepted by Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Timothy Gabriel. As is standard, Purvis was given a 1½ credit for more than seven years spent in jail without bail, which means his sentence is finished.

Outside the courthouse, he brushed aside a reporter's request for comment, saying "see you later" and waving his hands. He was soon driven away in the pickup by another man.

The court was told Purvis has 29 previous convictions, a record dating back to 1983. At the time of Miles's death, Purvis had been out of prison for about a year following a conviction for aggravated assault for stabbing another person in the neck with an exacto knife, Kennedy said. 

Kennedy told the court that Purvis put an "unrestrained beating" on Miles, who was "of meagre size," at his Dartmouth, N.S., apartment on Jan. 18, 2018.

The motive was "trivial," Kennedy said. Purvis's nephew, George Purvis, believed Miles had called him a rat, a derogatory word for police informant, after being told he had made the allegation in a social media message.

But Kennedy said outside the courtroom that when authorities examined the message, it was "quite clear that it was a misunderstanding" and that Miles had not written what was claimed.

The nephew and uncle, along with a third man, went to Miles's apartment. Gregory Purvis kicked and stomped him to death, the court has heard. He suffered eight broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a completely ruptured spleen.

The damage to the spleen was so bad, Kennedy said in court, that the medical examiner testified at the murder trial that he only sees such injuries in people who have fallen from great heights or are in bad car accidents.

Among the witnesses in the case was George Purvis, a mid-level drug dealer who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, was sentenced to nearly five years in prison, and testified at Gregory Purvis's original trial.

The prosecutor noted that sentences for manslaughter in Nova Scotia typically range between four and 10 years.