Melvin Jr. deemed dangerous

HALIFAX — Notorious Halifax crime figure Jimmy Melvin Jr. has been designated a dangerous offender and locked up indefinitely.

Melvin, 38, was sentenced in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax on Monday on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with a plot to kill rival gangster Terry Marriott Jr. that was thwarted by police in December 2008.

A jury found Melvin guilty in October 2017. The Crown then applied to have Melvin declared a dangerous offender and locked up indefinitely for the protection of the public.

After a series of delays because of changes in legal representation and then COVID-19, the dangerous-offender hearing began last July.

The Crown argued at the hearing that Melvin has engaged in a pattern of “unrestrained, repetitive, violent behaviour” for more than 25 years. That violence included an attack on an inmate at the Atlantic Institution in Renous, N.B., last September, while Melvin was in the middle of the dangerous-offender hearing.

In his decision Monday, Justice Peter Rosinski said Melvin presents a high risk to commit further violence in the future, and that his risk is intractable.

“I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Melvin is properly designated as a ‘dangerous offender,’ and that an indeterminate sentence of incarceration is the only appropriate sentence,” Rosinski said in a 164-page decision.

The judge concluded there was no “reasonable expectation” that any kind of a determinate sentence, even one with up to 10 years of long-term supervision in the community, would adequately protect the public against the commission of murder or another violent offence by Melvin.

The Parole Board of Canada must review Melvin’s case after seven years and again every two years to see if his risk has decreased to a point where he can be safely released into the community on parole.

The judge also ordered Melvin to provide a DNA sample for a national databank, imposed a lifetime firearms prohibition, and banned him from communicating with 36 people who testified at trial or sentencing, as well as Joshua Preeper, the man Melvin attacked in prison last September.