A Yukon Supreme Court judge failed to consider the lone Yukon dangerous offender's remorse and willingness to change when he handed the man a jail term with no end, defence counsel argued this week.

Thomas Paul Sharp, 42, will have to wait to find out if he's granted his appeal to be bumped down to a long-term offender from the designation of dangerous offender and the indefinite prison stint that goes with it.

The three-judge panel reserved its decision after hearing arguments Wednesday during the annual Whitehorse sitting of the Yukon Court of Appeal.

The territory shares an appeal court with British Columbia, and except for the annual spring sitting in the Yukon, the appellate judges hear cases in Vancouver.

Sharp was handed the relatively-rare label of dangerous offender last October, and is currently in a federal penitentiary. He's one of only several hundred such offenders in Canada.

He was convicted last fall of kidnapping a young woman at knifepoint on a downtown Whitehorse street in July 2001 before leading her to the Yukon River bank and sexually assaulting her.

That young woman, whose quick thinking to collect Sharp's DNA in a plastic container after he assaulted her led to his charge and conviction, was in the courtroom gallery briefly during Wednesday's appeal hearings.

Sharp was also convicted of forcibly seizing a B.C. university student, working in Whitehorse for a term, after she stepped off a city bus in November 2001, and trying to pull her toward a nearby wooded area.

He's also got a prior conviction for attempting to rape a 78-year-old woman in Oregon and molesting two young girls in Washington state.

Referring to a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that ruled lower court judges must first determine whether an offender can eventually be safely treated or controlled in the community, defence lawyer Gordon Coffin argued Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale didn't give enough credit to several factors in Sharp's case.

'It's a very narrow range' of offenders who are labelled dangerous by the courts, said Coffin. 'It is only the worst of the worst, so to speak, who are required to be declared a dangerous offender.'

Veale's analysis of the evidence shouldn't have added up to a dangerous offender designation, said Coffin, who argued Sharp should be labelled the lesser legal title of long-term offender and sent to prison for 10 to 14 years.

Long-term offenders are then supervised in the community for up to a decade on conditions similar to strict parole.

Coffin said there was evidence of a reasonable possibility of eventual control of Sharp in the community, the main difference between long-term and dangerous offenders.

Prosecutor Edward Horembala noted Sharp's record for breaching his parole including molesting two girls after skipping states and his breach of peace bond conditions when the man tried to drag the university student into the bush in Whitehorse, the event that saw Sharp lose his freedom for good.

'That's what we know about Mr. Sharp when we put him on community supervision,' Horembala said Wednesday, arguing Sharp has 'absolutely no respect for authority, for the justice system. And all that evidence was before Mr. Justice Veale.'

Coffin pointed to evidence about the phenomenon of 'burnout' from two psychiatrists who testified at Sharp's dangerous offender hearing. Though called 'complex and controversial,' the idea that once sex offenders reach their 50s, their libidos slow down, reducing their criminality, has been brought up in other courts, said Coffin.

Horembala, a local defence lawyer hired to handle Sharp's case because one of the victims worked for the federal Justice department, pointed out that besides the brief reference from the two psychiatrists, no evidence about burnout was before Veale.

The defence suggested the evidence that Sharp had responded well to medications in the past should be considered, but was countered by Horembala's note that the experts stressed the drugs are not a silver bullet.

Also, the libido-depressing medications, referred to as 'chemical castration', have such strong side effects that offenders often stop taking them, the prosecutor added.

After the two child molestation convictions in Washington state in 1992, Sharp took sex offender treatment at the Twin Rivers prison. According to his evidence, he was told to take the treatment or he'd be 'civilly committed' akin to Canada's indefinite jail term for dangerous offenders.

After his request for more focus on his problems stemming from childhood abuse was denied, Sharp said at his dangerous offender hearing, he began to 'play the game' and simply went through the motions of attending treatment in order to complete the program.

'That's a very unsettling piece of evidence,' noted appeal court Justice Mary Saunders during Wednesday's proceedings.

He was deported to his birth country of Canada on May 14, 2001, and re-offended in a sex crime less than three months later.

Coffin noted the psychiatrists' evidence that many offenders must take treatment two and even three times for it to be effective.

After hearing the psychiatrists testify at his dangerous offender hearing, Sharp told the court the treatment they described as being available in Canada's jail system was exactly what he'd been asking for in the U.S.

Coffin argued treatment that Sharp is willing to take, combined with medication, is much more likely to be effective than what he's had in the past.

Horembala questioned Sharp's honesty about being serious in his wish for help, pointing out that once he was about to be discharged from the Twin Rivers program, Sharp denied molesting the four- and seven-year-old girls. To this day, the repeat sex offender says he didn't put his finger in the girls' vaginas.

Upon his release to Canada in the spring of 2001, it was recommended to Sharp he continue with some kind of treatment, though he wasn't required to. Once in the Yukon, Sharp denied to sex offender treatment counsellors that he was a risk, even seven days after he sexually assaulted a stranger on the riverbank. At that point, it wasn't known he was the young woman's assailant.

'His credibility, given his history, was in serious doubt by the trial judge,' Horembala said.

He also suggested some of Sharp's more dramatic gestures had nothing to do with remorse, as the offender suggested.

Sharp had tried to hang himself in jail shortly after he was charged in January 2002 with the knifepoint sex assault the summer before. At his sentencing, he said it was a way to atone for what he'd done. Horembala had asked then why Sharp hadn't attempted suicide after he committed the crime rather than months later when he was charged.

At his dangerous offender hearing last fall, Sharp had notified the court the morning his two Whitehorse victims were to testify that he didn't want to be in court. He said it was to reduce the trauma for the young women.

The prosecutor questioned why Sharp didn't make that intention known earlier, and added that two weeks before that date, Sharp instructed his counsel to oppose an application to have the university student testify via video from Vancouver.

'Mr. Sharp has no remorse,' Horembala said.