Ellie Nesler killed a man in Jamestown, in Tuolumne County, California, on April 2, 1993. He was the defendant in a case concerning children, one of whom was her son. A jury acquitted her of first and second degree murder and convicted her of voluntary manslaughter. She was sentenced to ten years in 1994, the California Supreme Court set aside the jury's sanity verdict in 1997, and she pleaded guilty to manslaughter that October and was freed after about four years in custody.
The man she killed was Daniel Driver, the defendant in a criminal case concerning children, brought in 1989 and still at the preliminary-hearing stage in April 1993. Her son was among the children in that case.
She was charged in Tuolumne County Superior Court. The charge went to a jury as murder, with the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter also before it.
The trial was held in two phases. In the first, the jury considered whether she was guilty. It found her not guilty of murder in the first degree and not guilty of murder in the second degree, and it convicted her of voluntary manslaughter. It also found true an allegation that went with the offense and added to the sentence.
Her defense raised legal insanity, which moved to a second phase. After about a week of deliberation the jury found that she was sane when the offense was committed. She then moved for a new trial on both guilt and sanity, alleging misconduct by a juror. The trial court denied the motion in a written order of 18 pages.
On January 7, 1994, the Superior Court sentenced her to ten years. The term was made up of six years for voluntary manslaughter and four years for the enhancement. The court rejected pleas for clemency and refused her bail.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction, finding that any presumption of prejudice from the juror's conduct had been rebutted. The California Supreme Court took the case on the juror misconduct question alone. In People v. Nesler, decided on August 21, 1997, it held that the presumption of prejudice had not been rebutted as to the sanity phase. It reversed the Court of Appeal's judgment "insofar as it affirms the verdict rendered at the sanity phase" and sent the case back for a new trial limited to her sanity at the time of the offense. The verdict of guilt was not disturbed.
Rather than face a second sanity trial, Nesler pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the first days of October 1997. A judge ordered her freed on or about October 2, 1997, after about four years in custody.
In 2002 she was convicted of drug offenses and sentenced to six years in state prison. She was released in 2006. She died in California on December 26, 2008, at the age of 56.
April 2, 1993: the killing in Jamestown; she is charged in Tuolumne County Superior Court.
1993: the jury acquits her of first and second degree murder and convicts her of voluntary manslaughter; it finds her sane.
January 7, 1994: sentenced to ten years.
August 21, 1997: the California Supreme Court reverses the sanity-phase verdict and orders a new trial limited to sanity.
October 1997: she pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter and is freed.
2002: convicted of drug offenses; sentenced to six years.
2006: released from state prison.
December 26, 2008: she dies in California.