A judge has ordered a Richmond man with a history of violence against women to undergo a psychiatric assessment to determine whether he should be declared a dangerous offender.
Tuesday’s decision by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Gail Dickson came after James Lee Roper pleaded guilty in December to an incident in which he held his girlfriend hostage, punching, kicking and terrorizing her before firing a shot through a wall, the bullet grazing a police officer’s ear.
Crown counsel Dasein Nearing said the 2011 hostage incident was the latest in Roper’s long history of violence against women.
“There’s been a 19-year history of ever increasing violence against women and intimate partners,” she said.
Nearing cited in particular four assaults against one female partner, with Roper punching and kicking her numerous times.
On one occasion, after punching her in the head, he said, ‘I’ll kill you, you f---ing bitch. If the police are here, you’ll die.’
Roper also has a number of convictions for bank robbery, including two separate robberies in which he held up the same female teller.
Nearing said a number of prior assessments had been done on Roper including one in 2012 that found he was a high-risk to re-offend.
Michael Ritzker, Roper’s lawyer, said he didn’t oppose the psychiatric assessment, noting that there was a low threshold for approval of such assessments.
He said however that there were aspects of his client’s behaviour that put his actions in a more positive light.
The assessment is expected to take two months. If the psychiatrist finds that Roper is a high-risk to re-offend the Crown might proceed with a full month-long hearing to seek the dangerous offender designation, which can result in an indefinite jail term.
If he is deemed of a lesser risk to re-offend, the Crown can still seek a so-called long term offender designation, with a determinant jail sentence followed by a lengthy supervision order in the community.
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