I believe the SRV is VFR only out of the factory. The whole point of the aircraft was to sell it to flying schools that didn't want anything too fancy so that it could better compete with the C172 etc in the trainer market. It doesn't have the full IFR suite that the regular SR20/22 has.
It sounds from the report like he may have entered IMC briefly...I mean how else would he have ended up 25 degrees done and 66 degrees in roll? Unless he was so busy fiddling with the autopilot he didn't notice. Once having got into that situation rather than use the unusual attitude experience from his PPL training to recover he apparently panicked and through away a perfectly good aircraft.
I don't however belief that he wouldn't have been there without the chute...loads of pilots without chutes have tried continued VFR into IMC before and killed themselves in the process, people can just be that stupid. At least this guy appears to have tried to get out of it even if his skills were found somewhat wanting.