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 …