WOODLAND — The man who claimed he was legally insane when he struck and injured three bicyclists near Clarksburg last year abruptly withdrew his insanity plea Thursday, half a day into the sanity phase of his trial in Yolo Superior Court.
“Yes, your honor,” Alamar Cyril Houston told Judge David Rosenberg when asked after the court’s lunch break whether he wished to withdraw his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
With that, the month-long jury trial was over, ending with Wednesday’s guilty verdicts on 11 felony charges and two misdemeanors that have him facing more than 30 years in state prison. A separate court trial is set for 10:30 a.m. Friday regarding enhancements for Houston’s prior felony convictions and prison terms.
Houston’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson, declined to comment on his client’s sudden change in plea.
The jury, which deliberated over seven days, rejected attempted murder charges against Houston but convicted him of assault with a deadly weapon and hit and run with injury for striking the cyclists — part of a day-long crime spree on June 30, 2015, that left two of the bikers hospitalized.
“What other motive is there than trying to kill them?” said Shikha Lal-Jensen, whose 17-year-old son Taariq Jensen suffered a traumatic brain injury and spent two weeks in a coma after Houston struck him and his friend Jonathan Jackson from behind on South River Road.
“It’s frustrating, because the jury obviously doesn’t understand how vulnerable you are when you’re on a bicycle,” added Don Dumaine, the first cyclist Houston hit that day. “When someone in a 3,000-pound rolling steel vehicle hits you, it isn’t assault.”
“If that’s not attempted murder, I don’t know what is,” Dumaine said.
In addition to assault and hit and run, jurors convicted Houston, 40, of vehicle theft and evading or resisting police. They also found he used the stolen car to knock a motorcyclist from his bike in Sacramento and punched a West Sacramento store clerk in the face, adding two more counts of assault.
Houston was acquitted of charges alleging he was under the influence of methamphetamine when he committed his crimes.
The guilty verdicts sent the trial into a sanity phase, during which the defense bore the burden of proving that Houston suffered from a mental disease or defect, and that because of it he was incapable of understanding the nature and quality of his actions, and that they were legally or morally wrong.
Had he been found legally insane, Houston would have been sent to a state mental-health facility for treatment until deemed sane, a finding that requires a court ruling.
Johansson had called just one witness, Davis psychiatrist Dr. Captane Thomson, on Thursday morning and was prepared to elicit testimony from Houston’s mother that afternoon when he informed the court that Houston had decided to withdraw his plea.
Drugs or disease?
Attorneys debated Houston’s mental state throughout the trial’s guilt phase as well. Prosecutors Garrett Hamilton and Matt De Moura contended his crimes were triggered by a methamphetamine binge, and not a psychotic break as claimed by the defense.
In closing arguments he delivered Nov. 18, Hamilton said Houston consistently demonstrated self-awareness in his actions, starting with a vehicle theft in Colusa County to get to his desired destination of Sacramento.
From there he stole a second car at Sacramento International Airport, knocked the motorcyclist off his bike in downtown Sacramento, then verbally threatened another motorcyclist before crossing back into Yolo County and hitting bicyclists Dumaine, Jensen and Jonathan Jackson with the stolen SUV.
Houston then drove into West Sacramento, punched the Walgreens clerk in the face and led law-enforcement officers on a five-minute chase back into Sacramento, where he assaulted a police dog as it bit at his lower legs to detain him.
Hamilton noted that Houston fled from each of his crimes, actions he said could be construed as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
“Your common sense tells you that, number one, he knows what he’s done, and number two, he knows he shouldn’t have done it,” he said.
Even if mental illness were a factor, “people with psychosis, they complete complex tasks,” Hamilton said. “They’re frankly all around us in society. It doesn’t mean that you’re not guilty.”
Not necessarily, argued defense attorney Johansson, who called Houston’s behavior “the product of a diseased mind.”
“You can’t talk about Alamar Houston without talking about years of mental illness,” Johansson said in his closing remarks. Furthermore, “there’s not one shred of evidence regarding the actual physical presence of drugs.”
The defense attorney seized upon the absence of drugs or alcohol either in Houston’s possession or in his blood sample, taken roughly six hours after the South River Road collisions. Prosecutors say the drugs likely metabolized out of his system by the time officers obtained the sample, which required a warrant after Houston refused to consent to a blood draw.
Two California Highway Patrol officers trained in drug-recognition evaluations testified at trial that Houston demonstrated clear signs of being under the influence of a stimulant, including profuse sweating, teeth grinding, muscle rigidity and slurred speech.
The defense countered that by calling a former Yolo County Jail psychiatrist who recalled diagnosing Houston with unspecified psychosis and later schizophrenia following his arrest last year. Prosecutors say he has a history of faking mental illness, his malingering documented several years earlier at the Sacramento County Jail.
Johansson also argued that prosecutors failed to prove Houston harbored any intent to kill the three bicyclists, whose injuries ranged from severe road rash to an ankle injury to Jensen’s traumatic brain injury.
“These are not pretty facts, but analyze the evidence,” Johansson told the jury. “What you have is a man detached from reality. …Alamar Houston is truly not guilty of these facts.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene