A dangerous offender hearing will be held next fall for Jimmy Melvin Jr.
The notorious Halifax criminal is awaiting sentencing on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The Crown announced last month that it would be proceeding with an application to have Melvin, 36, declared a dangerous offender.
The prosecution team made the decision after a forensic psychiatrist from British Columbia performed a dangerous offender assessment on Melvin.
Melvin appeared in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax on Thursday with lawyers Pat Atherton and Michelle James.
Justice Peter Rosinski scheduled the hearing for three weeks beginning Sept. 23, 2019.
A jury found Melvin guilty last October for his involvement in a thwarted plot to kill Terry Marriott Jr. in 2008.
According to the evidence at trial, Regan Henneberry gave Melvin and Jason Hallett a drive to Derek MacPhee’s house in Harrietsfield on the night of Dec. 2, 2008, with the intention of murdering Marriott, who was there drinking alcohol and snorting cocaine.
Melvin and Hallett had two loaded guns with them in the vehicle, the trial was told.
Henneberry testified that he stopped and turned the vehicle around after seeing police cars at MacPhee’s house. MacPhee had called police after Henneberry allegedly tipped him off about the plan to kill Marriott.
Hallett was given immunity and money for testifying against Melvin. The charges against Henneberry were later dropped.
Marriott was shot to death in February 2009 at the age of 34. Melvin was acquitted of first-degree murder at trial in the spring of 2017.
Melvin has more than 60 convictions on his adult criminal record. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to a dozen charges stemming from altercations with guards at various Nova Scotia jails.
Melvin has been in custody at the Dartmouth jail for several months during the assessment process but now will most likely be returned to the Atlantic Institution in Renous, N.B., to serve his federal sentence, Crown attorney Rick Woodburn told the court.
If Melvin is designated a dangerous offender, the judge will order him imprisoned indefinitely unless the court is satisfied that a lesser measure would adequately protect the public. The lesser measure would be a determinate sentence with or without long-term supervision in the community for up to 10 years after his release from prison.
Woodburn said the Crown will argue that Melvin should be locked up indefinitely.
