Court rejects bid for new trial in slaying case

A state appellate court on Wednesday rejected an Acampo man’s bid for a new trial in the slaying of a former Vacaville woman and her unborn child.

Convicted murderer Timon Pool is serving a life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence for first-degree murder stemming from the 2006 strangulation death of former Vacaville woman Lillian Brenna Best, and a related count of second-degree murder for the death of Best’s unborn child.

Best and Pool reportedly had begun a relationship roughly a year prior to the slaying after he encountered her while she was performing with the Northern California Danse Macabre during a Renaissance Faire near Gilroy.

According to trial testimony, Pool strangled the 20-year-old woman during a loud, ongoing argument at a rural Acampo apartment during the early morning hours of July 23, 2006.

Pool admitted to first strangling Best with his hands, then using a twisted bed sheet “to finish it up.”

He claimed to have no knowledge of Best’s pregnancy at the time of the killing.

A San Joaquin County Superior Court found Pool guilty on both counts of murder in September 2007, and he subsequently appealed the conviction, charging that the court had improperly instructed the jury on the law governing murder of a fetus.

He also argued that the Stockton jury should have been given the option of an involuntary manslaughter count in the death of the fetus.

After reviewing the trial and the jury instructions, a three-justice panel of the state

Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, rejected Pool’s appeal Wednesday, ruling that the jury had been properly instructed.

Justices also pointed out that, “The trial court could not have instructed the jury on involuntary manslaughter because there is no such crime as manslaughter of a fetus.”