I don't know if he held a flight instructor certificate, but I don't believe so. I believe you're talking about Albert Kolk, who lost control on autopilot at night in severe turbulence over the mountains with three passengers, after he forgot to swap fuel tanks and a fuel imbalance caused a departure from controlled flight.
I found it interesting that in all the testing Cirrus did, leading to certification of the airplane, they never carried a parachute deployment out to it's eventual conclusion; a touchdown. Not once did they deply a parachute and then stay with the airplane under canopy all the way to the ground. The first ones who did were the customers...who then became unwitting test pilots under live, emergency conditions. Up through July 2005, none of them were successful, either. Kolk was only the second to do it, and actually have it work...and he shouldn't have been there in the first place.