Last year, District Court Judge Bill Simpson accepted a plea agreement and imposed nine to 10 years of prison time for a Meeteetse man who, while apparently in the throes of paranoia and delusion, raced into Powell at over 140 mph and crashed into four vehicles.

But last week, in a highly unusual and hotly contested decision, Simpson reversed course and released 52-year-old Cameron Boni to probation on two felony counts of aggravated assault.

“The underlying crimes the Defendant was convicted of are serious, but appear to be the result of mental health issues,” Simpson wrote in a lengthy ruling, adding that, “When considering the purposes of sentencing, rehabilitation seems to be the most applicable in this case.”

He ordered Boni to serve five years of supervised probation, with conditions that include obtaining a mental health evaluation and treatment.

The ruling came over the objections of the Park County Attorney’s Office, which contends Simpson lacked the legal authority to revisit Boni’s sentence.

Deputy County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Eichele noted that the plea agreement explicitly barred Boni from seeking a modification of his sentence. 

“... I’m still at a little bit of a loss of how we’ve gotten this far, to this point, when it was a clearly waived right,” Eichele added, saying it appeared Simpson simply regretted the harshness of the sentence.

But Boni’s defense attorney, Tim Blatt, made the case that incarcerating Boni amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment,” given his mental illness.

May 2023 crash

There have been questions about Boni’s competency since his May 2023 crash on Coulter Avenue. 

Multiple callers had reported Boni’s Jetta racing at high speeds east of Powell, and he was clocked at 143 mph near Homsteader Park on Coulter Avenue. He sideswiped an SUV between Bent and Absaroka streets, hit a truck, another SUV and finally a sedan before sliding to a stop.

In what one Powell officer described as a “miraculous” development, no one was seriously injured.

Boni has asserted he was speeding because a group of unknown people were out to kill him and had planted a bomb in his Jetta.

In later interviews with mental health professionals, Boni alleged his mechanic was among those conspiring against him — along with a group of people with shopping carts who smelled like toxic chemicals and had surrounded him the day before the crash, court records say. 

At his August 2024 sentencing, Boni insisted that his Jetta was “taken out of my control.”

“There was something that happened that I can’t explain, and I’m very sorry that it ended up like this,” Boni said.

Mental evaluations

Relatively early on in the case, a doctor found that Boni was mentally unfit to proceed. She described him as “paranoid and very suspicious.”

He was later restored to competency at the Wyoming State Hospital, but a clinical psychologist who evaluated Boni in early 2024 later concluded he was not guilty by reason of mental illness.

“Mr. Boni does have a major mental illness or deficiency that would constitute a severely abnormal mental condition that would grossly and demonstrably impair his perception or understanding of reality,” Dr. Crystal Redding wrote a June 2024 report, concluding that Boni lacked the capacity to “appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” at the time of the crash.

However, roughly a month after that report, Blatt announced he and then-Deputy Park County Prosecuting Attorney Jack Hatfield had reached a plea deal.

Hatfield saw the case very differently, disputing Boni’s claims that he had a break with reality and asserting the defendant was “obviously trying to kill people and himself.” The prosecutor had been seeking a second opinion about Boni’s mental condition at the time the agreement was struck.

Boni has prior felony convictions — third-degree assault in Oregon in 2001 and aggravated assault in Park County in 2007 for threatening a sheriff’s deputy with a knife — and Hatfield charged him as a “habitual criminal.” That enhancement meant a conviction on the aggravated assault charges would have carried at least a 10-year prison sentence. It was taken off the table as part of the deal.

Still, Boni appeared deeply reluctant to sign on. At the August 2024 sentencing, he insisted he was not guilty of the crimes, “but I don’t have a way to defend myself,” he said.

Simpson referred to the crash as “a tragic episode,” and said the sentence might seem “harsh and extreme,” but he accepted the deal.

A second bite at the apple?

Defendants are typically able to seek a modification or reduction of their sentence within a year of it being imposed. However, prosecutors often require defendants to give up that right when they sign a deal that involves a stipulated sentence.

At Boni’s change of plea hearing last year, Simpson warned the defendant that he was effectively waiving his right to seek a “sentence modification or adjustment.” For example, if Boni were to ask that a probationary sentence be changed or “reduced,” such a motion “would be deemed void on its face based on this agreement,” the judge said.

However, when Blatt filed a motion for a sentence modification in January, Simpson allowed the parties to argue the issue over a period of months.

Blatt argued there was case law suggesting the court could still consider a sentence modification, while Eichele asserted in a July filing that the judge appeared to be “[g]rasping for any authority in support of evading the plea agreement.”

Blatt argued in part that the lack of mental health care Boni was receiving within the Wyoming Department of Corrections system represented a “manifest unjust sentence.” However, Eichele, who took over the case from Hatfield, noted that both Blatt and Simpson were involved in the plea deal “and could have stopped it” last year.

“… doing it at this late day, I believe, is a manifest injustice,” Eichele said.

‘Modification’ versus ‘reduction’

Simpson ultimately concluded he could change Boni’s sentence without violating the terms of the plea agreement. 

Blatt had requested a sentence “modification” — which was indisputably prohibited by the deal — but Simpson said the defense’s request was “mislabeled.” In fact, the judge wrote, Boni was actually seeking a legally distinct sentence “reduction,” and the plea agreement “clearly left out any language regarding reductions …”

He directed that Boni be released from the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp in Newcastle and placed on supervised probation. Boni must undergo a psychological examination and follow all of the recommendations — such as attending therapy sessions or taking prescribed medications. Boni will also need to report to the court every 60 days, among other probation conditions.

Simpson wrote in his order that keeping Boni incarcerated “is likely a safe option in that he is contained and watched.”

“However, the defendant will be eligible for parole in approximately 2+/- years, and without any mental health treatment, he may continue on with the same criminal pattern,” Simpson said in ordering five years of probation.

The judge noted that Boni’s mother and stepfather, Kathy and Howard Thompson of Cody, have been willing to help monitor and care for him.

Boni served more than 2 years and three months in custody prior to last week’s release.