I can not access this article & was wondering if it has any info for us here?
TIA!
2 years after Boise's mass stabbing, here's the status of the court case
Niner, I copied and pasted the article for you in its entirety. Good catch! It is an excellent and thorough commentary by Simmons.
July 3, 2020 Idaho Press Reporter Tommy Simmons
BOISE — Two years ago Tuesday, at an apartment complex in northwest Boise, a man allegedly broke into a home where a 3-year-old girl was celebrating her birthday and stabbed nine people with a knife, six of them children.
The girl, Ruya Kadir, later died from her injuries. It led prosecutors to charge the case’s suspect, Timmy Kinner Jr., now 32, with first-degree murder, as well as eight counts of aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated assault, and one count of burglary. He’s also charged with a sentence enhancement — the use of a deadly weapon during the commission of a crime.
While prosecutors have announced they’ll seek the death penalty, the case has seen very little public movement in recent months. Many of the case’s documents and hearings have been sealed.
Kinner’s jury trial is still set to take place in February.
GAG ORDER
From the beginning, public interest in the case was massive. People brought balloons and stuffed animals to the Wylie Street Station Apartments in the 4600 block of Wylie Lane, where Ruya and the case’s other victims had lived. A crowd gathered there in support the night after the stabbing, and another, larger crowd — this one thousands strong — congregated for a vigil in the victims’ honor the night after that in front of Boise City Hall.
There was interest in Kinner as well, who had been in custody since his arrest on the night of the stabbing. Kinner — originally from Memphis, Tennessee — had been staying with a resident of the apartment complex the night the stabbing happened. At Kinner’s initial appearance in court by video from the Ada County Jail,
the courtroom was full, and people crowded in the doorway. All of the case’s early movements were tracked by local media, and the case’s online court record shows multiple requests from news outlets asking for permission to bring cameras into the courtroom to cover hearings. The record also shows attorneys filed a motion to ban cameras in the courtroom weeks after Kinner’s initial appearance; a judge denied that motion.
In April 2019, after 10 months of heavy media coverage, 4th District Court Judge Nancy Baskin
did take the rare step of issuing a gag order in the case, at the request of Kinner’s public defenders. The order bars anyone involved in the case from talking about it with “reporters, the media, or on social media.”
Baskin cited concern for Kinner’s Sixth Amendment right to a trial before an impartial jury when she issued the order.
Thus, for more than a year, many of the people with information about the case have been barred from talking about it with the Idaho Press.
Julianne Donnelly Tzul of the International Rescue Committee helped organize early efforts to help the families affected by the stabbing, all of whom were members of Boise’s refugee community.
“The families affected by the Wylie attack are mourning during the anniversary of this unimaginable tragedy,” Tzul wrote in an email to the Idaho Press Monday evening. “We thank the community for their support in the wake of this incident. We ask that the privacy of the families are respected during this difficult time.”
COURT CASE
It’s not unusual for a case as serious as Kinner’s — in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty — to drag on for years, said Mark Haws, an adjunct professor at Concordia University School of Law in Boise, who also worked as a federal prosecutor. Defendants in death penalty cases have nothing to gain from a swift court process, and every twist and turn the case takes will likely be reviewed through numerous appeals before a person is executed.
“That just raises the bar, and their defense attorneys — rightfully so — insist on having ample time to fully prepare,” Haws said, speaking only about death penalty cases in general, not Kinner’s specifically.
Kinner’s case is even more complicated because it involves a question of mental health. Early on in the process, his attorneys voiced concern for his competency, saying that while they could talk with him normally on some days, on other days that wasn’t possible.
Idaho is one of only a handful of states without a traditional insanity defense — in which a defendant could plead not guilty by reason of insanity — but a judge can still find a defendant unfit for trial. If a judge makes that determination, a defendant is sent to a psychiatric hospital — or, as in Kinner’s case, a ward at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution — to receive treatment until doctors feel they are, once again, fit for trial. The process can take months during which there is little movement on the case.
“That is a hugely complicating thing, and it is a time-consuming thing too,” Haws said.
A judge
in October declared Kinner fit for trial after months of treatment.
Hearings regarding Kinner’s competency have been largely closed to the public, and for months, documents in the case have been routinely filed under seal. In February,
the Idaho Supreme Court declined a request from Kinner’s attorneys to consider his competency.
That was the last significant publicly visible development on the case. The last time attorneys appeared in court for the case as Feb. 26, according to online court records.
A long, drawn-out court process can be difficult for victims, Haws said, who “want to be made whole right now.”
“Victims do get frustrated,” he said.
The case’s next hearing is set for January, and the trial itself is set to begin Feb. 2. It is scheduled to last two months.
Even if Kinner’s eight-week trial does take place early next year, it won’t be the last trial he has if convicted. Idaho, like many other states, has a bifurcated process for determining if a person receives the death penalty — there is a trial to determine guilt, followed by another trial to determine if the defendant receives capital punishment.
Even after that, years — and sometimes decades — of appeals follow the decision to put someone to death.
END OF ARTICLE