John Hearings Require Competent, Admissible Evidence; NGMI Examiner Testimony Restricted to “Mental Condition”

I. Introduction

In Mark Coleman Helms, II v. The State of Wyoming, 2026 WY 24 (Feb. 23, 2026), the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a second-degree murder conviction and, in doing so, significantly clarified the evidentiary and procedural demands of pretrial self-defense immunity litigation under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-602(f) (2023).

After Mark Coleman Helms, II (“Mr. Helms”) shot and killed his cousin, Nicholas Velazquez (“Mr. Velazquez”), Mr. Helms sought dismissal before trial, asserting immunity from prosecution under Wyoming’s self-defense immunity statute. The district court conducted the required pretrial immunity hearing established by State v. John, 2020 WY 46, ¶ 40, 460 P.3d 1122, 1134 (Wyo. 2020) (a “John Hearing”), denied immunity, and the case proceeded to trial.

The appeal presented four key issues: (1) whether the district court wrongly barred testimony from Mr. Helms’s NGMI evaluator at the John Hearing; (2) whether Mr. Helms made a prima facie case for immunity under § 6-2-602; (3) whether the trial court erred in a malice-inference instruction that omitted burden-of-proof language; and (4) whether evidence sufficed for second-degree murder.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Court affirmed on all grounds. It held:

  1. The Court declined to adopt a blanket rule that Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 7-11-304(h) bars designated examiners from testifying at a John Hearing; however, in this case § 7-11-304(h) properly precluded the proffered testimony because Mr. Helms sought to use it on an issue “other than that of the mental condition of the defendant,” namely to show he was not malingering about memory loss.
  2. The district court correctly denied immunity because Mr. Helms failed to present competent, admissible evidence establishing a prima facie case of self-defense; speculation and hearsay-laden attachments did not satisfy his burden.
  3. Any error in the altered malice instruction was unreviewable under invited error because Mr. Helms proposed the challenged instruction.
  4. The evidence was sufficient for second-degree murder under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-104 (2023) and the definition of “maliciously” stated in Wilkerson v. State, 2014 WY 136, ¶ 27, 336 P.3d 1188, 1200 (Wyo. 2014).

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1. The John Hearing framework and standards of review

The decision is anchored in State v. John, which requires a pretrial hearing on § 6-2-602(f) immunity and assigns the defendant the initial prima facie burden. The Court again applied John’s appellate posture: review the immunity denial “in the light most favorable to the district court’s decision.” John, 2020 WY 46, ¶ 59, 460 P.3d at 1137-38 (citing Dixon v. State, 2019 WY 37, ¶ 17, 438 P.3d 216, 226 (Wyo. 2019)).

The Court also framed immunity determinations as “mixed question[s] of law and fact,” citing Huckelby v. State, 313 So. 3d 861, 865 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2021), and reiterated Wyoming’s approach: deference to factual findings unless clearly erroneous, but de novo review of the ultimate legal application of § 6-2-602. For the “clearly erroneous” definition and deference rationale, it relied on Davis v. State, 2025 WY 120, ¶ 11, 578 P.3d 805, 809 (Wyo. 2025) (quoting Marquez v. State, 2025 WY 61, ¶ 47, 569 P.3d 356, 369 (Wyo. 2025)), and on credibility/weight principles from Hanson v. State, 2025 WY 56, ¶ 23, 568 P.3d 1186, 1192 (Wyo. 2025). For general rulings absent specific findings, it cited McCalla v. State, 2026 WY 18, ¶ 15, ___ P.3d ____ (Wyo. 2026) (citing Dixon).

2. Prima facie burden is “slight,” but still demands evidence

To explain “prima facie,” the Court cited Schneider v. State, 2022 WY 31, ¶ 15 n.2, 505 P.3d 591, 595 n.2 (Wyo. 2022) (quoting Wyo. Bd of Land Comm’rs v. Antelope Coal Co., 2008 WY 60, ¶ 12, 185 P.3d 666, 669 (Wyo. 2008)). It reinforced that the “minimal burden” is still a burden, relying on Johns v. State, 2018 WY 16, ¶ 14, 409 P.3d 1260, 1265 (Wyo. 2018).

The key doctrinal move came from McCalla v. State, 2026 WY 18, ¶ 19: on pretrial motions the defendant must submit “competent and convincing evidence,” and “representations, arguments of counsel, allegations and statements made in motions are not evidence.” This proposition drove the Court’s rejection of Mr. Helms’s document-heavy but evidentiary-light approach.

3. Speculation cannot substitute for proof

In rejecting Mr. Helms’s suggested scenarios (an argument; a chase; a forceful entry), the Court invoked Harnetty v. State, 2022 WY 68, ¶ 33, 511 P.3d 165, 174 (Wyo. 2022), emphasizing that “speculation, conjecture” and “guesses” do not establish material facts—particularly relevant where § 6-2-602 presumptions turn on concrete predicates such as “unlawfully and by force.”

4. Evidence competence means admissibility: hearsay and police reports

The Court’s evidentiary analysis drew on older and out-of-state authority to illustrate what counts as “incompetent evidence.” It cited Holm v. State, 404 P.2d 740, 743 (Wyo. 1965), for the idea that unauthenticated/hearsay evidence is “unworthy of belief.” It cited McDaniel v. State, 24 So. 3d 654, 657 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2009), for the proposition that, given the defendant’s burden, hearsay is not admissible to prove a material fact at an immunity hearing.

For “hearsay within hearsay” embedded in investigative reports, it cited Seaton v. State of Wyo. Highway Comm’n, Dist. No. 1, 784 P.2d 197, 200 (Wyo. 1989). And it relied on the structural limitation in W.R.E. 801(d)(2) by citing United States v. Wilkerson, 84 F.3d 692, 696 (4th Cir. 1996), to explain why a defendant cannot introduce his own out-of-court self-serving statements through the “party admission” doctrine.

5. Invited error and instructional challenges

On the malice-inference instruction, the Court applied the invited error doctrine, relying on Townsend v. State, 2025 WY 108, ¶ 13, 576 P.3d 1254, 1258 (Wyo. 2025) (quoting Toth v. State, 2015 WY 86A, ¶ 45, 353 P.3d 696, 710 (Wyo. 2015)). For the waiver/forfeiture distinction and what constitutes waiver, it used Jackson v. State, 2019 WY 81, ¶ 9, 445 P.3d 983, 987 (Wyo. 2019).

The Court found this case materially similar to Jackson (defendant offered the instruction) and Mackley v. State, 2021 WY 33, ¶ 16, 481 P.3d 639, 643 (Wyo. 2021) (affirmative endorsement), and acknowledged “a fine line” between omissions and affirmative acts as noted in Vaught v. State, 2016 WY 7, ¶ 35, 366 P.3d 512, 520 (Wyo. 2016).

6. Sufficiency of evidence for second-degree murder vs. manslaughter

The Court applied its familiar sufficiency rubric from Wilson v. State, 2025 WY 116, ¶¶ 11-12, 578 P.3d 402, 405-06 (Wyo. 2025) (quoting Huckins v. State, 2020 WY 21, ¶ 10, 457 P.3d 1277, 1279 (Wyo. 2020)), and the “reasonable inference of guilt” standard from Munoz v. State, 2024 WY 103, ¶ 8, 556 P.3d 238, 240 (Wyo. 2024) (quoting Hultberg v. State, 2024 WY 59, ¶ 12, 549 P.3d 759, 761 (Wyo. 2024)).

For second-degree murder malice, it used Wilkerson v. State, 2014 WY 136, ¶ 27, 336 P.3d at 1200. For voluntary manslaughter and “heat of passion,” it relied on Jacobs v. State, 2021 WY 104, ¶ 13, 495 P.3d 303, 308 (Wyo. 2021) (quoting Farrow v. State, 2019 WY 30, ¶ 35, 437 P.3d 809, 820 (Wyo. 2019)), the victim-provocation requirement from Jacobs, ¶ 14 (citing Krucheck v. State, 702 P.2d 1267, 1270 (Wyo. 1985)), and the incompatibility of heat of passion with malice from Schmuck v. State, 2017 WY 140, ¶ 28, 406 P.3d 286, 296 (Wyo. 2017).

B. Legal Reasoning

1. No blanket bar on examiner testimony at John Hearings—but § 7-11-304(h) is a sharp limitation

The Court’s first important clarification is what it did not do: it “decline[d] to adopt a blanket rule” that Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 7-11-304(h) forbids designated examiners from testifying at a John Hearing. This preserves flexibility for cases where examiner testimony genuinely goes to “the mental condition of the defendant.”

But the Court enforced § 7-11-304(h)’s core evidentiary command: “no statement made by the defendant” during an NGMI examination “is admissible in evidence in any criminal proceeding on any issue other than that of the mental condition of the defendant.” Mr. Helms’s proffer—“not malingering or making up the lack of memory”—was treated as outside the statutory scope.

Independently, the Court held the testimony failed ordinary relevance and helpfulness requirements (W.R.E. 401 and W.R.E. 702): whether Mr. Helms lacked memory did not make it more or less likely he had an “honest belief” in danger, or that deadly force was what a reasonable person would deem “necessary.”

2. The evidentiary centerpiece: John Hearings are governed by the Wyoming Rules of Evidence

The Court’s most consequential reasoning concerns what evidence a defendant may use to carry the prima facie immunity burden. It emphasized that W.R.E. 1101 applies to “all actions and proceedings” unless excluded, and John Hearings are not among W.R.E. 1101(b)’s exceptions. The practical result: defendants must present evidence that is not merely persuasive in narrative form, but admissible under the Rules of Evidence.

From that premise, the Court dismantled Mr. Helms’s reliance on attachments:

  • Sheriff’s office reports: the defendant did not offer them into evidence at the hearing and did not explain admissibility. Substantively, the Court noted multiple hearsay problems: (a) statements offered for truth are hearsay (W.R.E. 801(c)); (b) police reports are “specifically excluded” from the public records hearsay exception (W.R.E. 803(8)); (c) embedded witness statements create “hearsay within hearsay” (W.R.E. 805; Seaton). And critically, Mr. Helms could not introduce his own statements as “party admissions” because W.R.E. 801(d)(2) applies only when offered “against a party,” not by the party to exculpate himself (United States v. Wilkerson).
  • Designated examiners’ reports: they likewise contained self-serving hearsay and were not shown to be admissible. Additionally, the Court reiterated that the malingering/memory-loss angle was irrelevant to § 6-2-602’s elements.

This analysis operationalizes McCalla v. State’s admonition: motions do not “prove” themselves. Even for a “slight” prima facie burden, the evidence must be competent—i.e., admissible and probative of facts “of consequence.”

3. Applying § 6-2-602: invited guest + no evidence of necessity defeats immunity

The Court focused on two statutory failures that independently doomed immunity.

(a) No “unlawful and by force” entry; therefore no presumption of violent intent.
Mr. Helms sought the benefit of the home-entry presumptions, particularly § 6-2-602(d), which presumes an intruder intends an unlawful act involving force or violence if the person “unlawfully and by force enters or attempts to enter” a home/habitation. But Mr. Velazquez was “an invited guest,” and Mr. Helms offered only speculation to transform lawful presence into unlawful, forceful entry. Without proof of the statutory predicates, the presumption never arises.

(b) No prima facie showing of “reasonable defensive force” under § 6-2-602(a).
Immunity requires a prima facie showing that the defendant used force a reasonable person would deem “necessary,” including deadly force only if necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury. The Court agreed with the district court that the record was “completely devoid” of evidence showing necessity. The limited hearing record—body location and a folded pocketknife nearby— did not support an inference of imminent deadly peril, particularly absent evidence of an assault, threatened violence, or other objective indicators.

4. Instructional error blocked by invited error

Although W.R.E. 303(c) requires that when a presumed fact is submitted against the accused the jury must be told that, if the presumption establishes guilt or an element, its existence must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the Court did not reach merits. The reason was procedural: Mr. Helms proposed the exact instruction given, omitting the burden-of-proof sentence found in W.Cr.P.J.I. 21.04C (2023). Under Jackson v. State and Mackley v. State, proposing and failing to correct the instruction constituted waiver—invited error—precluding appellate review.

5. Sufficiency: extreme indifference malice supported; no heat of passion proof

The Court held a rational jury could find “maliciously” (as defined in Wilkerson v. State) beyond a reasonable doubt: Mr. Helms’s voluntary ingestion of multiple intoxicants; arming himself with a rifle; statements reflecting dangerous awareness (“easier to hit stuff with the rifle” when not in his right mind); forced entry through a locked bedroom door; and firing despite his wife yelling “It’s Nick.” These facts permitted an inference of reckless conduct manifesting extreme indifference and absence of legal justification.

The Court also found no evidentiary foundation for voluntary manslaughter: “heat of passion” requires sudden provocation produced by the victim’s actions (Jacobs v. State (citing Krucheck v. State)), and the record instead reflected lack of argument and that the victim was identifying himself.

C. Impact

1. Elevated practical burden in immunity litigation: “slight” does not mean informal

While reaffirming that a prima facie showing is “minimal,” the decision makes clear that defendants cannot meet that burden through narrative attachment practice (police reports, evaluations) unless those materials are introduced in admissible form. This will likely change John Hearing litigation strategy: defendants will need live witnesses, stipulations, or properly supported evidentiary motions establishing a hearsay exception (or non-hearsay purpose) for documents.

2. John Hearings will resemble evidentiary mini-trials

By emphasizing W.R.E. 1101’s applicability and rejecting hearsay-forward motion practice, the Court signals that John Hearings are evidentiary proceedings, not merely proffer-based. This may increase hearing length and complexity, but it also promotes reliability given that immunity under § 6-2-602(f) is case-dispositive.

3. Limits on using NGMI examinations as a general-purpose litigation tool

The Court’s treatment of § 7-11-304(h) prevents parties from repurposing NGMI examination statements to litigate non-mental-condition issues, such as credibility-adjacent questions (malingering about memory). The decision preserves the statute’s protective function—encouraging candid mental evaluations without opening broad evidentiary backdoors.

4. Home-entry presumptions have clear predicates

The ruling underscores that the “castle doctrine”-style presumptions in § 6-2-602(b) and § 6-2-602(d) require proof of “unlawful and forcible” conduct. Where the decedent is an invited guest, defendants must present concrete evidence converting the guest into an “intruder” under the statute; mere speculation about arguments, training, or possible threat is insufficient.

5. Invited error remains a powerful appellate gatekeeper

The opinion also reiterates that instructional challenges may be unreviewable when the defendant proposed the instruction. Practitioners should treat pattern instructions (like W.Cr.P.J.I. 21.04C) as defaults and document any deviations with deliberate strategic reasons, understanding that appellate review may be forfeited by affirmative proposal.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • “John Hearing”: A pretrial evidentiary hearing required by State v. John to decide whether a defendant is immune from prosecution under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-2-602(f) for using justified defensive force.
  • “Prima facie showing”: Enough evidence that, if not rebutted, would be sufficient to establish the claim. It is a low threshold, but it still requires actual evidence—not attorney argument or unadmitted documents.
  • “Competent evidence”: Evidence that is (1) admissible under the rules of evidence and (2) tends to prove a fact at issue. Hearsay typically is not competent unless an exception applies.
  • Hearsay / “hearsay within hearsay”: An out-of-court statement offered for its truth (hearsay). When a report contains additional statements by other people, each layer must independently satisfy a hearsay exception (W.R.E. 805).
  • “Party admission” (and why defendants can’t use it for themselves): Under W.R.E. 801(d)(2), a party’s statement is admissible when offered against that party. A defendant generally cannot introduce his own out-of-court statements through this rule because they are self-serving.
  • “Invited error”: If a party proposes or affirmatively endorses the very ruling later challenged on appeal (such as a jury instruction), the appellate court may refuse to review the claim because the party “invited” the error.
  • “Malice” (second-degree murder): Under Wilkerson v. State, “maliciously” for second-degree murder means acting recklessly under circumstances showing extreme indifference to human life, without legal justification or excuse.

V. Conclusion

2026 WY 24’s enduring significance lies less in its affirmance of Mr. Helms’s conviction and more in its clarification of how Wyoming’s self-defense immunity procedure must be litigated. The Court reinforced that a John Hearing is an evidentiary proceeding governed by the Wyoming Rules of Evidence; defendants must carry their prima facie burden with competent, admissible proof, not speculative theories or hearsay-laden attachments. At the same time, the Court preserved flexibility by declining a categorical ban on NGMI examiner testimony at John Hearings—while strictly enforcing § 7-11-304(h)’s limit to “mental condition” issues. Finally, the opinion serves as a cautionary tale on jury instruction practice: proposing an instruction can waive the right to challenge it on appeal under invited error.