Judge stays on Humboldt school threat case after DA challenge fails

Judge Kelly Neel will stay on Daryl Ray Jones’s Humboldt County school-threat case after Judge Timothy Canning rejected the district attorney’s bid to remove her.

Jones now faces 31 charges tied to more than a dozen threatening phone calls made across Humboldt County in early 2025. On April 24, 2025, Neel had already suspended criminal proceedings and ordered a psychological evaluation after Jones told the court he did not really understand why he was there. At that point, he was facing 19 felonies over threats aimed at more than 20 schools and businesses.

Neel later told the court that her daughter attends Arcata High School, one of the schools targeted, but said that would not affect her ability to be fair. The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office filed a Section 170.6 challenge, a California procedure that lets a party remove a judge without proving actual bias. Defense attorney Meagan O’Connell argued the office was using a blanket challenge and shopping for a different judge, saying her preliminary research showed the DA had filed that kind of motion against Neel 131 times since 2018. Canning sided with the defense and let Neel remain on the case.

Before Canning ruled, four other judges had already been disqualified because of personal ties to the case: Judges Steven Steward, Lawrence Killoran, Cockrum and April Van Dyke.

The next hearing is set for July 31, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. That proceeding will determine whether Jones qualifies for mental-health diversion, which can move an eligible defendant with certain mental health disorders into treatment rather than prosecution, and whether the Humboldt County case continues as a conventional criminal matter.