Judge excludes self-defense after arguments over jury instructions in Timberview shooting
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Mansfield Timberview High School shooting
Four people were injured in a shooting at Mansfield Timberview High School in Arlington. Police arrested the shooter, a student at the school.
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Instructions guiding the deliberation of the jury in the trial of a Mansfield Timberview High School student indicted on attempted capital murder will not permit the panel to consider that the shooting was justified by self-defense, a judge ordered on Wednesday.
The fourth day of the trial of Timothy Simpkins in 371st District Court in Tarrant County included hourslong discussion of the instructions.
Jurors are to begin deliberating on Thursday after closing arguments are delivered at 8:30 a.m.
Prosecutors objected to a defense request to include self-defense material in the instructions. After Judge Ryan Hill made clear his decision to exclude consideration of the central element of the defense argument in the case, defense attorney Marquetta Clayton told the judge the ruling would cause “egregious harm” to her client.
Simpkins is accused of wounding three people in a shooting at the school in Arlington in October 2021.
Simpkins’ attorneys have argued that when their client fired a handgun six times, he acted in self-defense because he was in fear of another student who had just beaten him in a fight.
Surveillance and cellphone video recordings played for the jury showed that Simpkins, then 18, fired a .45-caliber Glock at 15-year-old Zacchaeus Selby after Selby pummeled Simpkins inside a classroom.
Prosecutors and the defense dispute whether the fight was underway or had concluded when Simpkins shot Selby. Simpkins continued to shoot as Selby ran into a hallway, and a teacher and another student were injured by the gunfire.
In a cross examination on Tuesday, defense attorney Leesa Pamplin, who also represents Simpkins, asked the lead Arlington police detective on the case whether Selby can be heard during the fight saying, “On Blood, [expletive], on Blood.”
Violent Crimes Unit Detective Sean Wheetley said he heard that Selby statement, a street gang reference, in the video.
Pamplin also asked Wheetley if he knew what if any effect being stomped on the head had on the defendant’s brain.
“I don’t know anything about that, ma’am,” Wheetley testified.
Selby was shot in the chest, arm and legs. A teacher, Calvin Pettitt, 25, was shot in the back and also survived. Another student was grazed by a bullet in the Oct. 6, 2021, shooting.
Neither Selby nor Simpkins testified.
Lloyd Whelchel displayed for jurors the Glock Model 21 handgun that the prosecutor alleged Simpkins used in the Timberview High shooting before he fled the campus. The school, though it is in Arlington, is in the Mansfield Independent School District.
Police found the gun and a magazine holding ammunition in a bedroom closet and dresser in an apartment where Simpkins’ sister and a man she dated then lived. Simpkins turned himself in to police in the early afternoon on the day of the shooting.
Whelchel is prosecuting the case with Rose Anna Salinas, the chief of the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office criminal division.
Simpkins’ defense attorneys on Tuesday asked Hill to hold Selby in contempt of court because of what they alleged was his violation of the judge’s admonishment when Selby was sworn in as a witness on Friday before jury selection.
Hill did not then directly restrict Selby’s social media commentary.
In the last several days, Selby posted to Instagram a press image of Simpkins in the courtroom. Selby also sent a message to Charley Johnson, a potential witness in the case, a defense attorney said. Johnson recorded the cellphone video of the fight and on Tuesday testified as a defense witness as it was played for the jury.
“What are you doing?” Selby asked in the message that Johnson considered threatening and is an instance of witness tampering, the defense told the judge.
Hill, who has permitted the press to broadcast video of most of the trial, prohibited a television news photographer from recording his supplemental admonishment to Selby on Tuesday as the jury was on a lunch break.
Hill directed Selby to refrain from posting to social media material connected to the trial or from contacting potential witnesses by phone or social media. Selby probably would find himself “sitting in a jail cell” if he violates the additional admonishment, the judge said.
This story was originally published July 19, 2023 at 8:50 AM.
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