Brian Wothers, the 43-year-old military veteran who robbed and killed 26-year-old Jeffrey David Maxwell at Graham Swamp after partying with him earlier that night in 2006, is seeking release from all state supervision 17 years after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and committed to a state hospital. A circuit judge is not ready to grant that step just yet.
Over the years Wothers has complied with his medicated regimen and had his supervisory strictures gradually reduced. He’s been living on his own for several years, but still under the supervision of SMA Healthcare. SMA is clearing him for release from all supervision.
Wothers, his attorney David Glasser and Carrie Anderson, forensic director at SMA, all appeared by zoom before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins for what was billed as a status hearing last week, and that morphed into a request for Wothers to be fully released. Perkins wasn’t ready to take that step.
“If somebody is going to move to change Mr. Worthers’s status, whether it’s a termination or whatever, that needs to be in writing,” Circuit Judge Terence Perkins said. The documentation has to be in writing, including a final discharge diagnosis and summary. “Let’s get to what the facts are in there.”
Wothers will need court documentation showing whether he is released in all regards or whether any supervisory authority will remain, Perkins said.
“We went through extensive proceedings on his behalf,” Glasser told the judge. “He is a veteran, and we went through procedures for him to receive treatment. And he did. He went through many, many hoops to establish himself. He’s done very well, and he relocated out of the state.”
Glasser hadn’t had contact with Wothers in “quite a while.” But as the status hearing was set, he learned that his client was up for discharge from all supervisory programs. “I’m sure he would be glad for that to happen,” Glasser said. The two had not even had a phone call before the hearing.
“I haven’t received any notice of discharging him from the program,” Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis said. “All I’ve seen is annual reports.”
The forensic director at SMA told the court that it was a request from SMA to discharge Wothers “due to the fact that he’s been doing really well on his conditional release plan,” she said. But again, the SMA documentation was not in the court file.
SMA will provide that documentation. It’ll then be up to Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols to determine Wothers’s future. Perkins was sitting in for Nichols last Tuesday.
The morning of May 26, 2006, maintenance men about to clear brush in Graham Swamp found Maxwell of Denison, Texas, with bullet wounds in his chest. Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies determined that Maxwell had been staying at the Palm Coast Sleep Inn with a friend, who told deputies that Maxwell had gone to strip clubs in Daytona Beach with another group of people who were staying at the motel. He had called his roommate a few times overnight, the last time at 3:25 a.m., to tell him he would be back at the motel in 20 minutes.
Maxwell had borrowed phones during the night to make his calls. The last phone he borrowed, for the last call he placed, belonged to Brian Wothers, a 24-year-old resident of Ormond Beach, a frequent patron at Lolly Pop’s, the club where Maxwell was seen that night. Surveillance video there showed Wothers and Maxwell leaving together at 2:51 a.m.
At 4:30 a.m., Wothers woke his brother up, told him he’d just shot and killed someone, and was leaving town. Wothers had told his stepfather that he’d given “a guy” a ride to Palm Coast, that the guy had passed out in the car and woke up acting weird, so Wothers threw him out of the truck–and shot him. Wothers was in the National Guard. He had an M-4 rifle. The five shell casings found near Maxwell came from an M-4.
Wothers had also robbed Maxwell, the father of a 4-year-old son. He was arrested. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of first-degree murder. On March 7, 2008, following a joint stipulation by the prosecution and the defense, Judge Kim Hammond declared Wothers not guilty by reason of insanity. The court found that Wothers had a history of mental illness, suicidal thoughts, depression, PTSD and substance abuse, and that he was “a manifest and serious danger to the public and to himself.”
The court did not find him incompetent to stand trial, but that at the time of the killing, “he lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform to the requirements of law.” The court ordered him committed to a state hospital.
In 2010 Wothers requested to be held in a less restrictive environment. Then-Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano denied the request, then granted it two years later, and by 2014, Wothers was allowed to live in his own apartment, under daily supervision. That was reduced to two days a week in 2018 by Circuit Judge Dennis Craig, who termed himself “agreeable but uneasy.”
