Leon David Fallow (36) served most of an eight-year sentence for the Invercargill manslaughter of 31-year-old Darnell Glen Leslie in 2008.
After seven months of freedom, he subjected his new partner to a vicious assault in her South Dunedin home after a night out drinking.
Fallow twice strangled the woman, to the point where she told the court she was almost resigned to dying.
He denied a charge of injuring with intent to injure.
``I never touched the bitch ... and she threatened me because she knows I'm on parole,'' Fallow told police after the incident.
But Judge Michael Crosbie found him guilty after a trial at the Dunedin District Court
last year.
He sentenced Fallow to two years and three months' imprisonment and said he considered the incident ``high-level violence on the cusp of being extreme.''
Despite that, with five months of the jail term left to serve, Fallow has been released on parole.
At a hearing at Invercargill Prison, the Parole Board heard the prisoner had completed a short 25-session violence prevention programme while behind bars.
``Since his completion of that programme he has moved into the self-care unit and been approved to work outside the wire,'' panel convener Neville Trendle said.
``His Principal Corrections Officer reported that Mr Fallow has coped well with the transition into self-care. He works well around the villas and, as he remarked to us, in the two months he has been there he has come out of his shell.''
Fallow had stopped taking his prescribed medication when the most recent offending happened, and Mr Trendle said it was critical that was remedied.
While the prisoner had no work lined up on the outside, the Parole Board was impressed by the supports he would have in place.
Fallow will be required to submit to random alcohol and drug tests during his parole period and will appear again in front of the board in January for a monitoring hearing.
``In other words, it is necessary to ensure that Mr Fallow is walking the talk,'' Mr Trendle said.
Fallow's parole conditions will run until his statutory release date in February and for six months afterwards.
