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Although Tien Dinh Huynh was charged with intoxicated manslaughter in the death of Willie Edward McDonald 11 years ago, he’s never been tried.
Doctors and juries, so far, have said 54-year-old Huynh isn’t capable of helping his lawyer, James Beeler, prepare for the case.
“The last time I saw him, he’s just been like a vegetable,” Beeler said. “You talk to him and he looks right through you. You could shoot a gun off right by his head.”
About once a year, doctors examine Huynh to see if he’s competent to stand trial. A motions hearing scheduled for Wednesday was delayed because Huynh’s psychological evaluation wasn’t done. English isn’t Huynh’s first language, and finding a Vietnamese doctor in the area is tough, District Attorney Stephen Tyler said.
Judge Robert Cheshire has not set a new court date for Huynh.
Ultimately, Tyler’s goal is to prosecute Huynh. Huynh killed a man and a jury or judge should dole out the right punishment, Tyler said.
Linda Maldonado, McDonald’s sister, isn’t sure what would be justice in this case. If it were possible, she’d like to see a trial.
“Did he pay for what he did?” Maldonado said. “Not really. I don’t know if justice has been done until he is behind bars. He not only killed a person, he killed a family.”
Family was one of the most important things to McDonald, his 50-year-old sister said. He married only a couple of years before he died at 42, she said. He adopted his wife’s son.
“He waited a really long time before he found the right person to marry,” said Maldonado, who rarely sees her sister-in-law or nephew now.
Staff at Travis Middle School in Port Lavaca still remember the special education and science teacher. Maldonado is an aide at the same campus.
McDonald moonlighted as a defensive driving teacher. He headed home from a class in Palacios on April 17, 1997. McDonald often stopped by his mother’s Port Lavaca house on his way back to Victoria. But he told his wife he was headed straight home.
That night, Huynh left a Victoria bar, put his 5-year-old son in the car and drove toward Port Lavaca, where the family lived, according to court records. Thirteen miles south of Victoria, Huynh and McDonald collided.
A family friend saw remains of the wreck on U.S. Highway 87. She told Maldonado and her mother she thought McDonald’s Jeep was involved.
Meanwhile, McDonald’s wife was agitated.
“She kept calling and wondering where he was,” Maldonado said.
Maldonado and her mother finally decided to drive to the accident. By the time they got there, the road was clear. But two men told them a Jeep was wrecked, engulfed in flames and the driver might have died.
Maldonado passed a wrecker hauling a charred Jeep as she pulled into Victoria.
“That vehicle looked old,” she said. “It was, of course, crashed. You could tell from the shadow of the vehicle what it was.”
They drove on to Citizens Medical Center where they found out McDonald was dead.
Huynh was injured, too. He walked with crutches after the crash, Beeler said.
But soon, Huynh’s condition would get worse.
At first, Huynh could talk to Beeler with the help of a translator. Months after the wreck, Huynh’s wife, Tanya Ngyen, filed for divorce. She sued him in civil court, winning $20,580 in damages for herself and her son, who was injured in the accident.
At some point – Beeler can’t remember exactly when – Huynh stopped responding to anything.
“It seemed he just went off in a world all his own,” Beeler said. “He just sat there. And just stared at things.”
The change seemed to happen over night.
“The question was, at first, is he faking it?” Beeler said. “It soon became obvious he wasn’t faking it.”
Huynh was sent to a state mental hospital. Since the divorce, he has no family in the area, Beeler said.
Huynh sat in a wheelchair, staring at his lap, unable to talk, when he last appeared in court, those who were there remembered.
“There wasn’t anything there,” Beeler said.
But last year, Huynh moved to a facility that’s more like a nursing home, Beeler said. The biggest improvement is Huynh can feed himself, said Beeler, who hasn’t seen his client in years.
Even if a doctor says Huynh is lucid, the case against him gets harder to prosecute as each year passes.
“It’s difficult to prove an 11-year-old case,” said Tyler, who was a law student when the crash happened. “Witnesses are gone, evidence is old. Anybody that worked the case could have retired.”
In a decade, laws change, too. If Huynh’s case goes to court, judges and lawyers would need to turn back to 11-year-old statutes.
But the greatest challenge might be getting Huynh to trial at all. Usually, courts assume people are competent to stand trial, Tyler said. Defense lawyers have to prove their client is not. But once a person has been admitted to a state hospital, prosecutors must prove that person is competent.
Essentially, Tyler’s task is to prove a negative, he said.
“I have less hope than I normally have,” Tyler said.