Jury convicts Nixon on most counts
A jury that for four days had listened as witnesses provided conflicting testimony explaining the brutal bludgeoning murder of Wesley “Bubba” Collins found a 19-year-old Kalispell man accountable for the death Friday in Flathead District Court.
Jeffrey Allen Nixon was found guilty of accountability to deliberate homicide, robbery, burglary and tampering with physical evidence in a verdict delivered at about 4:30 p.m.
The jury determined that Nixon aided, abetted, agreed or attempted to aid Robert Lake in the planning and commission of Collins’ murder on April 12, 2010.
Nixon was found not guilty of deliberate homicide, though the alternative charge of accountability to deliberate homicide carries a similar maximum penalty of 10 to 100 years in Montana State Prison.
He did not use a weapon during the murder, according to the jury.
“We are disappointed in the verdict,” Noel Larrivee, one of Nixon’s defense attorneys, said while leaving the Flathead County Law and Justice Center.
A family member of Collins embraced Deputy County Attorney Alison Howard as she and fellow prosecutor Lori Adams were leaving the courtroom.
Nixon, wearing a white buttoned-up shirt and a tie, was led out of the courtroom by detention officers and placed back in the county jail.
The body of 49-year-old Collins was found in a wooded area off of Patrick Creek Road days after police say he was beaten with two hammers and later strangled to death inside his apartment on Two Mile Drive in west Kalispell.
Lake, who lived in the unit below Collins with his girlfriend Karrolyn Robinson, was convicted earlier this year for deliberate homicide and is serving a 110-year sentence in state prison.
Over the course of five days of testimony and argument, Adams and Howard accused Nixon of helping Lake beat Collins to death with hammers as part of a plan to steal his medical marijuana.
Lake, who is appealing his sentence, testified Tuesday that he killed Collins in self-defense, a theory that differed from that of Nixon and the Flathead County Attorney’s Office.
Nixon took the stand in his own defense Thursday and said that he was in shock and fearful of Lake after Lake attacked Collins “out of the blue” as the three were smoking marijuana together.
Nixon said he never touched the body and that the only reason he told a friend he had killed Collins was because he was afraid of Lake. He admitted to helping Lake and Cody Naldrett clean the crime scene and take Collins’ body to the wooded area, where it was later found by law enforcement officials.
Friday’s verdict put at least a temporary end to the legal proceedings that followed the murder.
Nixon was the only one of five young Flathead County residents arrested in the wake of the murder and subsequent cover-up that took his case all the way to trial.
Naldrett was sentenced to 18 months in the Flathead County Detention Center and eight years of probation for helping Lake and Nixon hide Collins’ body.
Robinson was sentenced to eight years in Montana Women’s Prison for deleting text messages from phones seen as evidence in the case.
Joshua Fritz got a suspended sentence for tampering with evidence.
District Judge Stewart Stadler set a sentencing hearing for Nixon for 9 a.m. Aug. 25.
In addition to a possible 100-year sentence for accountability to deliberate homicide, Nixon could face up to 40 years for robbery, 10 years for tampering with physical evidence and 20 years for burglary.