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Appeals court orders Lake County Superior Court to consider insanity plea by man convicted of murder
In a 26-page unpublished opinion filed on Sept. 25, the First Appellate District Court of Appeals for California’s Division 2 ruled on the case of The People v. Timmons.
An “unpublished” opinion means that it cannot be cited in cases as a legal precedent, as opposed to “published” opinions of the appellate court, which can be used as precedent and authority for lower courts.
The case involves Willy Tujays Timmons, 43, sentenced in March 2022 to 16 years to life in state prison for the June 2017 killing of Vanessa Yvette Niko.
In November 2021, a jury convicted Timmons of second-degree murder, torture, inflicting injury resulting in a traumatic condition and aggravated mayhem, and special allegations of use of a deadly weapon and personally inflicting bodily injury.
The appellate ruling noted that Timmons’ sole contention in the appeal, filed in May 2022, is that “the trial court erred when it refused to allow him to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges in the latest indictment filed against him.”
The court noted, “We agree, and we therefore reverse the order denying the request to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The judgment is affirmed insofar as it adjudicates defendant’s guilt.”
The filing explains that a psychologist who examined Timmons in late 2017 “found he exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoid type, with delusions, as well as of methamphetamine use disorder.”
Niko, 35, was a mother of six, three of whom were children she had with Timmons. Their youngest child was 11 months old when she died.
On the day he killed her, Timmons picked up Niko and took her to a home on Bridge Arbor Road in Upper Lake. A deputy who later responded to the scene witnessed Timmons assaulting Niko, striking her in the head with a rock. She died a short time later.
Former District Attorney Don Anderson convened special criminal grand juries which indicted Timmons on the charges for which he eventually was convicted.
The appellate ruling documented Timmons’ efforts to disqualify three of his court-appointed attorneys — Tom Quinn, Andrea Sullivan and Mitchell Hauptman — through Marsden motions.
In the case of Quinn — who would not offer comment for this story — “there has been a complete breakdown in the relationship between Mr. Quinn and Mr. Timmons which would make it impossible for Mr. Quinn to effectively represent Mr. Timmons,” which is why the Lake County Superior Court granted the Marsden motion and relieved Quinn as counsel.
Sullivan was appointed to represent Timmons but later was removed after she only had one 15-minute phone call with him during 11 months, according to the appeal document.
In July 2021, Timmons sought to have Hauptman removed from his case due to neglect.
In a hearing, Hauptman stated, “I have to agree with Mr. Timmons. It is an unusual position for me to take. I don’t mean to dodge the work, but as a matter of fact, I have seen him only once. I have been ignoring phonecalls [sic] that have been made on his behalf. I have declined to pursue needs that he suggested are appropriate. And I generally find myself beyond the similar malaise of the Covid most—just not really able to focus or get involved in this particular case. And I did discuss that with Mr. Timmons. It just seemed unfair to have a lawyer quite as disinterested as I find myself.”
Hauptman was removed and the court appointed a new attorney, Thomas Feimer, who along with Sullivan runs Lake Indigent Defense, which holds Lake County’s indigent defense contract.
The appeal notes that Feimer had just three months to review the case and prepare for trial, and that he “faced communication challenges, due to among other things a COVID-19 outbreak and quarantine at the jail and defendant’s resistance to discussing his case for fear of being recorded at jail.”
It was Feimer who informed the court in October 2021 that based on his review of the case, “it appears that Mr. Timmons attempted to or did enter a not guilty by reason of insanity plea in 2018,” and thus he “intends to enter that plea once again, to the extent that it is not entered currently.”
“The court stated it had reviewed the case file and found that no NGI appeared to have been previously entered to the charges in the superseding indictment. The court then ordered the parties to brief the issue,” the document said.
On Oct. 25, 2021, five days before the trial started, Feimer filed a brief requesting entry of the not guilty by reason of insanity, or NGI, plea.
Three days later, Judge J. David Markham held a hearing on the request, during which Quinn testified that Timmons had entered the NGI place “on a couple of occasions.” Quinn suggested that the matter “became procedurally convoluted” because “we don’t really do grand juries too often in this county, and in this case we did two of them.
“Quinn confirmed defendant never expressed a desire to proceed in ‘any other different way,’” the appeal document said.
Timmons also testified during the hearing, and Feimer argued that Timmons had not shown a desire to withdraw his NGI please.
“One could argue, well, his lawyers didn’t do anything in the intervening time to do that,” Feimer is quoted as saying in the appellate document. “However, I think it kind of ignores a basic reality that Mr. Timmons is not an attorney. That’s why he has representation. NGI pleas are procedurally complex things. I think it’s somewhat unjust to penalize him for not following the strict technical requirements of it.”
Ultimately, Markham ruled that Timmons had failed to enter an NGI plea and that the failure “falls squarely on the shoulders of the defendant.” He denied Timmons’ request to enter it at that point.
A month later, on Nov. 17, 2021, Timmons was convicted by a jury following his trial. He was sentenced in March 2022 and filed the appeal two months later.
The appellate process
Feimer told Lake County News in a Wednesday interview that he didn’t handle the appeal, as appeals are a very specialized type of law.
When a case is appealable and he’s instructed to do so by a client, Feimer said he files a notice of appeal.
There is a group called the First District Appellate Project, which works to put together the case record and then appoints the defendant a lawyer. It’s a process not unlike appointing a public defender in a lower court, Feimer explained.
In reviewing the case, the appellate court cited the Sixth Amendment Center’s report, released earlier this year, into the indigent defense contract in Lake County. That’s because Timmons had cited it in his case when claiming that it is common for indigent defendants in Lake County to bring Marsden motions against attorneys.
When considering the Lake County Superior Court’s decision to not let Timmons enter the NGI plea, the appeals court found, “The court’s reasoning is hard to follow. First, the court’s comments appear to be internally inconsistent. In one paragraph it acknowledged the evidence showed that defense counsel ‘harbored a belief that an NGI plea had been entered.’ But in the following paragraphs, the court took a seemingly inconsistent view. It suggested that counsel could not have held such a belief, because if they did hold such a belief, then that would mean they were incompetent for doing nothing to prepare for the sanity phase of trial. In addition, when the court stated there was no evidence that counsel were ‘so incompetent’ in that regard because none of them affirmatively admitted to his or her incompetence in a declaration or testimony, it imposed an evidentiary rule that is not based on any law as far as we know.”
The justices concluded that the court set up “an arbitrary rule” which “it then relied upon to avoid having to scrutinize the inactions of defendant’s attorneys with respect to the NGI defense.”
As such, the justices concluded that the Lake County Superior Court abused its discretion in denying Timmons’ request to enter an NGI pleas.
“In so concluding, we note defendant’s comment that ‘[i]t is understandable that the trial court was frustrated with the age of this case before it went to trial. . . .’ We are also mindful of the challenges facing overworked attorneys of indigent defendants, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. At the same time, however, in our view it was unfair for the court to impute the delay in tendering an NGI plea to the charges entirely on defendant, and then use that as a basis to deny his request to enter such a plea, for the reasons stated above. Moreover, this is not a case involving a defendant seeking to enter an NGI plea as part of a calculated scheme of delay. To the contrary, defendant here made known to everyone his intent to enter a plea of NGI to the superseding indictment at the outset, but, because the issue ‘got kind of lost [in the] shuffle[ ],’ he was unable to formally enter the plea.”
What’s next
The justices upheld Timmons’ guilt in the murder, and remanded the case to the trial court to allow Timmons to enter his NGI plea to the charges in the superseding indictment handed down by the second grand jury Anderson had convened.
Feimer said there’s no court date scheduled yet in Lake County. First, the appellate court must issue a remittitur, which will be sent to the local court.
“That is the signal to the superior court that the case is finished at the appellate level and that it’s time for the superior court to take action by placing it on calendar and having him transported from the prison,” Feimer said.
Timmons is serving his term at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad. If the process goes forward, it’s expected that he would be transported back to the Lake County Jail during the proceedings.
If Timmons comes back to Lake County, Feimer said he would ordinarily still be Timmons’ attorney.
The appellate court did not reverse the jury verdict, they just reversed and remanded the case back to the Lake County Superior Court in order to allow Timmons to enter the NGI plea.
Should Timmons return, the court will appoint psychologists to evaluate Timmons and there could be a jury trial just on that issue, Feimer explained.
However, Feimer said the question now is, whether Timmons will want to go through with it.
“He may personally wish to leave things as they are,” said Feimer.
That’s because, if Timmons were found not guilty by reason of insanity, Feimer said Timmons would be sent to a state hospital rather than a prison.
“The issue is, he’s eligible for parole after a certain date currently,” said Feimer.
If Timmons went to a state hospital, theoretically he could be released if they find out he’s not a danger to others. However, Feimer said it’s also very possible he could spend the rest of his life there.
“And that oftentimes happens, especially in a case like this,” Feimer said.
Feimer added that Timmons “may find that his options look better if he simply remains in prison.”
He said he is now looking into whether Timmons has to come back to Lake County for the proceedings and what options he has if he wants to avoid moving forward.
Feimer said Timmons could return and not enter a plea in the proceedings.
“If that’s the case, then the trial result would likely just stand as it is,” Feimer said.
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