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The B.C. Supreme Court has ordered a man convicted of first-degree murder to be moved back to a minimum-security prison after he challenged his transfer to a higher-security institution for allegedly kissing a staff member.
The ruling posted this week says Treyvonne Willis was transferred from William Head Institution on Vancouver Island to medium-security Mountain Institution in Agassiz, B.C., in February.
The ruling by Justice Eric Gottardi says Willis was moved after a guard reported seeing him kissing a female correctional manager in a “locked and darkened room.”
The next day, he was transferred “on an interim basis” to Mountain Institution, which has “enhanced restrictions” on inmates’ liberty, according to the ruling.
William Head’s warden had determined after a hearing that Willis should be “reclassified” as a medium-security inmate and “held in an institution offering a degree of supervision not possible” in William Head.
Willis challenged the warden’s decisions in court, claiming they were unreasonable and stemmed from an unfair process.
Willis, who stabbed 26-year-old Kaila Tran to death in Winnipeg in 2012, “adamantly” denied kissing the manager but acknowledged hugging her.
He claimed that he was trying to “console” the woman after she shared “personal experiences and difficulties” with him, and later acknowledged that hugging her was inappropriate.
Willis said in a rebuttal letter that as an inmate serving a life sentence, he was in an “emotionally vulnerable state” and there was a power imbalance between him and the manager.
Gottardi said Willis was in an “increasingly awkward or inappropriate relationship” with the woman.
He agreed with Willis that the transfer decision didn’t include a “clear finding of fact that kissing had occurred” and that the warden omitted details about why he didn’t believe the inmate’s version of events, which undermined the “intelligibility” of his decision.
The warden also didn’t “meaningfully” articulate why Willis couldn’t be transferred to a different minimum-security prison, and also failed to “grapple with the existence of a power imbalance.”
“These criticisms are well placed,” the judge wrote.
The decision says the warden put the onus on Willis to “establish boundaries to protect himself” from the woman’s “unprofessional manner.”
“When a decision maker has fundamentally misapprehended or failed to account for the evidence before it, the reasonableness of a decision may be jeopardized,” the ruling says.
“At no point does the warden grapple with the notion that, in situations involving persons in authority and significant power imbalances, the law often recognizes, as does common sense, that the vulnerable party does not have the ability to make a true choice devoid of expressed or implied pressure.”
The ruling, handed down in early July, says the decisions to transfer Willis were unreasonable, ordering that he be returned to a minimum-security prison.
It did not say whether any action was taken against the prison manager and the Correctional Service of Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 7, 2025.
Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press
