Judge hands man 30 months probation in aggravated assault against doctor

Emphasizing the need for the justice system to handle the mentally ill with “special care,” a judge on Thursday sentenced a man to 30 months probation for a brutal attack on a doctor inside the psychiatric ward at Penticton Regional Hospital.

Terms of the probation order handed down to the Gregory Stanley Nield, 33, also require him to complete 50 hours of community service, have no contact with Dr. Rajeev Sheoran and abstain from illicit drugs and alcohol.

Nield, who lives with his wife on his parents’ orchard in Summerland, was convicted in April of one count of aggravated assault following a jury trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Penticton.

The attack on Dec. 4, 2014, inside a private interview room left Sheoran unable to work as a psychiatrist while he recovered from a broken jaw and teeth, brain damage and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of multiple punches to his head.

The trial heard testimony from nurses, who said Nield, a decorated jiu-jitsu fighter, walked out of the room after the incident and announced, “I think he’s dead.”

Nield, a former massage therapist, had been involuntarily committed to the psych ward a week earlier because he was displaying symptoms of psychosis resulting in part from his attempt to treat debilitating migraine headaches with magic mushrooms.

He has since regained his mental health and demonstrated “no deterioration in his mood or emergence of psychiatric symptoms,” making him a low risk to reoffend, Justice Hope Hyslop said in her reasons for sentence.

She went on to note that “from the earliest days of the English legal history, those originally termed lunatics — now more euphemistically referred to as persons suffering from mental disorder — were treated as a special case deserving special care and consideration by the Crown.” Nield, she continued, falls into that category. “The court cannot ignore the context and place where the offence of aggravated assault took place. Were it not in the context of a mental health facility, a three-year sentence or more would be a fit sentence for this unprovoked attack,” said Hyslop.

“However, not in Mr. Nield’s case. I cannot lose sight of where and why Mr. Nield was in the PRH psychiatric unit.”

Sheoran was not in the courtroom Thursday. The Crown had sought a prison sentence of up to four years due to the long-lasting impacts of the assault on the doctor.

Nield, who was accompanied by his parents and wife, declined comment outside court.

But his lawyer, who argued at trial that his client was justified in resorting to violence to escape what he believed was false imprisonment, said he accepted the sentence — sort of.

“If he was properly convicted, I think it’s the appropriate sentence, because he’s spent the last two years (on bail) under house arrest and doing everything the criminal justice system needed him to do,” said Stan Tessmer.

Tessmer believes, however, that his client ought to have been acquitted at trial and has already launched an appeal he expects to be heard in the next six to eight months.

The case won’t end there, however, as Nield and Sheoran have both sued each other, plus the Interior Health Authority, in civil court.

Tessmer expects a two-week trial on that matter to commence late next year in Kelowna.