Killer asking judge to overturn conviction

PALMER — A man who pleaded no contest to charges he set his mother’s house on fire, killing her in the process, is seeking to have his conviction overturned.

Timothy Weys, 28, was sentenced in March 2006 to serve 75 years in prison for the fire, which burned the home on Willow Drive in the Cottonwood Shores subdivision in July 2005.

“This is a case about an unintentional killing,” said Weys’ attorney, Doug Miller, at a court hearing Tuesday, noting that Weys pleaded to a murder count that fell short of first-degree murder, the charge reserved for an intentional killing.

“In essence, he was sentenced to the same term he would have received if he had been convicted of intentional murder,” Miller said.

Speaking by phone from Arizona, where the state has sent him to serve his term, Weys poked holes in the defense that his attorney, Diane Foster, had raised on his behalf.

He said he thought at the time he was pleading to a manslaughter charge. He also said that he later realized the murder charge he pleaded to was essentially a charge used when a death is caused while someone is committing a certain class of felony.

The felony in this case was criminal mischief — destruction or damaging or property — where the property damaged was worth more than $100,000. But he said his mother’s home wasn’t worth that much.

Ways said that doesn’t make sense. “How I can cause $100,000 property damage to a property that was worth far less?”

Then there’s the tampering-with-evidence charge. Weys said that related to some clothes he was wearing the night of the fire. He asked Alaska State Troopers if they wanted them. They said no, so he threw them away.

“I had asked her to file a motion to have the tampering-with-evidence charge dismissed,” Weys said.

He said at the time he was losing sleep in prison and having trouble fully comprehending what deal he was entering into. He described his mental state as distraught, “after you’ve turned yourself in for making the biggest mistake of your life.”

“I have a nasty habit of detaching from a situation I don’t want to be a part of,” he said.

On his turn to question Weys, Assistant District Attorney Rick Allen started with the question of why Weys thought he was pleading to manslaughter.

“Can you read and write?” He asked. “And you read the offer sheet. Where does it say anywhere on there ‘manslaughter?’”

“They were just lumped all into one, is what she said,” Weys replied, referencing the criminal mischief and manslaughter charges which he believed at the time somehow combined to make a murder charge.

Reading from a letter Weys wrote to the court, Allen said, “I tried to scam the house insurance company. This was so I could rebuild a better house for my mom,” and, later, “I do not deserve a life outside prison. I do not even deserve a life.”

Allen also called a rebuttal witness — Foster, who was Weys’ original defense attorney.

Foster said Weys was one of her more articulate clients, that he never brought up any concerns about possibly being delusional and that he seemed adamant about wanting to get the case over with.

Had he not been so adamant, Foster said, she may have filed some of the motions he was now saying she should have. She could have probably gotten the evidence tampering charge thrown out or the criminal mischief charge reduced, thus invalidating the murder charge he eventually pleaded to. She also probably could have gotten a court order allowing her investigator access to the burned house.

But the offer the district attorney made would be rescinded if the defense made any motions. Weys wanted to take the deal. So filing motions would not have been the right move.

Foster and Weys even differed on how many times she visited him. Weys estimated it was twice, Foster that it was more than four.

In the end, Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler set another hearing on the matter for July 16.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.