MARTINEZ — Anthony Timmons was 18 in December 2015 when police arrested him on prices that he’d aided a Richmond gang member within the killing of a person who was mistaken for a police informant in a 2006 murder case.
For Timmons, the arrest would mark the start of a wait of greater than seven years behind bars, which ended Might 3 when a jury discovered Timmons not responsible of all prices. He was freed later that day. Now in his mid-20s, Timmons is re-entering society as a person with no convictions on his file, regardless of spending nearly his total maturity behind bars.
“I imagine he was the Contra Costa jail’s longest resident when he was launched,” Timmons’ legal professional, Howard Williams, mentioned in a Tuesday interview. “He’s only a sufferer of the authorized morass that stored him there for thus lengthy.”
Timmons protection throughout trial was easy: the August 2015 homicide of 66-year-old Carl Roberts was not Timmons’ doing, however the work of his co-defendant, Antoine Saucer, a 41-year-old Richmond native and reputed gang member who was convicted of killing Roberts in 2021. Williams painted Timmons, who was 17 on the time of Roberts’ homicide, as a hapless child who acquired right into a automotive with Saucer unaware that Saucer deliberate to eradicate a witness towards him for one more killing.
The prosecutor, Deputy District Lawyer Satish Jallepalli, seized on two key details: Timmons ended up in possession of the homicide weapon and admitted to police that he was current for the taking pictures. However Williams mentioned each these issues had been proof of his salient argument: that Saucer invited Timmons alongside as a result of he deliberate to pin the crime on him when police began sniffing round.
“I personally don’t imagine it was a gang factor. I feel it was an Antoine Saucer factor,” Williams mentioned, later including, “(Saucer) realized from his errors from 2006.”
Saucer’s story is extra difficult. It entails a experience down the legally complicated intersection of psychological healthcare and prison courtroom. Saucer was arrested and charged in 2006 with murdering Burt Mascarenas, 33, in a taking pictures on the 600 block of Harbour Approach in Richmond. However whereas awaiting trial in jail, he was discovered mentally incompetent to face trial and despatched to a state hospital.
After years of therapy, medical doctors decided they couldn’t restore Saucer’s psychological competency and he was finally launched again to Richmond, with the homicide cost nonetheless pending. Then, in 2015, he apparently mistook Roberts for an eyewitness within the Mascarenas killing and resolved to eradicate an eyewitness.
Authorities couldn’t level to a clearcut motive within the 2006 killing, although at trial there was proof that Saucer was offended by Mascarenas implying he was a snitch as a result of Saucer was rapidly launched from jail after an arrest on the time.
After Saucer’s subsequent arrest for killing Roberts, he as soon as once more petitioned the courts to seek out him mentally incompetent. However this time, he was ordered to face trial. In 2021, a jury convicted him of each murders, and he was sentenced to life in jail.
Timmons, in the meantime, confronted a “maze of authorized points” that stored him in jail, Williams mentioned, obstacles that included awaiting Saucer’s competency hearings, motions to sever the 2 circumstances and whether or not to strive him in juvenile or grownup courtroom and going by a number of attorneys. Lastly, in March 2023, he went earlier than a choose and jury.
Requested for touch upon the result of Timmons’ trial, Contra Costa District Lawyer’s workplace spokesman Ted Asregadoo launched an announcement saying prosecutors had been disenchanted however “acknowledge and respect” the jury’s resolution.
“Though Mr. Saucer was discovered responsible of each murders, it could not absolutely consolation the victims’ households, however the verdicts could help in offering closure,” the assertion says.