Mother Guilty of Voluntary Manslaughter

Ellie Nesler, a 40-year-old single mother who gunned down her son’s alleged molester in a Jamestown courtroom in April, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter Wednesday.

A Tuolumne County jury in this historic Gold Rush town returned its verdict shortly before 7 p.m. Prosecutors had argued for a first-degree murder conviction although Nesler’s defense team had pressed for acquittal.

Nesler now faces a second trial phase to determine if she was temporarily insane when she pumped five bullets into the head of her son’s alleged molester, Daniel Driver, 35. What the jury decides about her state of mind at the time of the shooting will determine if Nesler serves up to 11 years in prison or a minimum of six months in a mental facility.

Although she was convicted, Nesler and her attorney conceded that it could have been worse.

“I’m happy and very hopeful,” Nesler told reporters after the verdict. “(Voluntary manslaughter) is about all we could have gotten in this trial. The second phase is where we can get the acquittal.”

Nesler’s attorney, J. Tony Serra, also was pleased that Nesler was not convicted of a more serious crime. “They did the correct thing. Thank God for a just and fair jury. We’re obviously encouraged for the second phase.”

W. Scott Thorpe and Jo Graves, prosecutors with the state attorney general’s office--which handled the case because the local district attorney had witnessed the killing--declined to comment on whether the outcome was a victory.

“I won’t express my opinion until the second phase of this trial is over,” Graves said. The next phase of the proceedings, scheduled to begin Sept. 7, is expected to last three weeks.

The voluntary manslaughter conviction was predicted by observers who believed that Nesler would not be found guilty of first-degree murder because she was a mother acting out of concern for her child. But at the same time, they said she could not be set free because she had killed someone in court.

That dilemma was at the heart of a wrenching case that has garnered worldwide attention, raising the specter of Wild West vigilante justice and transforming Nesler into a reluctant emblem for people besieged by crime.

It all began Friday, April 2, at a preliminary hearing in nearby Jamestown, where Driver was facing charges of molesting Nesler’s son, then 6, and three other boys at a Christian camp here in 1988.

Driver was a vagabond who had spent three months in a Santa Clara County jail in 1983 for child molestation. In 1986, he returned to his mother’s home here and insinuated himself into Nesler’s life by toting a Bible and reciting verses word for word.

During the trial, her attorney argued that Nesler would never have walked into the Jamestown courtroom and gunned down a shackled Driver had she not been pushed over the edge by a series of fast-moving events that morning.

First, her son could not stop vomiting in anticipation of testifying against Driver, who had once allegedly threatened to kill the boy and his mother if he told anyone about the molestation.

Then, as Driver was led into the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies, he reportedly flashed a smirk at Nesler and the boy. Nesler lunged at Driver and was held back by family members.

Finally, another mother who earlier testified against Driver told Nesler in the hall outside the courtroom that her testimony was weak and that Driver “was going to walk.”

That is when Nesler, Serra said, filched a palm-sized, .22-caliber semiautomatic from her sister’s purse, which was hanging unattended in the court hall, went back into the courtroom and emptied the chamber, missing her mark only once.

“Coldblooded murder--baloney,” Serra said during two hours of closing arguments Friday. “She was crazy. She went stark raving crazy at that moment. How did she have cold blood? Her blood was too hot.”

In the days after the shooting, a multitude of journalists, talk show and TV movie representatives swooped down on the town, which served as the backdrop for “High Noon” and countless other Hollywood Westerns.

Two area banks set up Ellie Nesler defense funds, and shops and honky tonks up and down Main Street collected cash in big glass jars. T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaimed “Nice Shooting, Ellie.” Calls of support poured in from across the country and from Canada, Italy, Spain and Denmark.

Hollywood got cold feet when it was revealed that Nesler was on methamphetamines at the time of the shooting.

It was one of the most sensational and resounding cases in the colorful history of this Mother Lode country, and it raised questions of whether an impartial jury could be found.

Prosecutors Thorpe and Graves acknowledged the quandary of sitting a jury in Nesler’s hometown. The law has a remedy for the unpopular defendant pilloried by the public--moving the trial somewhere else. But what happens when the woman accused of murder has two country-Western odes written about her?

Prosecutors pressed forward with the case, arguing that Nesler was making good on a promise of vengeance she had uttered many times over the past three years.

“She meant to, expected to, intended to kill Daniel Driver,” Graves told the jury during closing arguments. “We’re talking about the murder of a man in custody in handcuffs.”

On Wednesday, minutes before the verdict was read, Tuolumne County Superior Court Judge William G. Polley denied a defense motion for a mistrial on the grounds that one juror allegedly spoke about the case to a friend.

Times correspondent Patty Fuller contributed to this story from Sonora. Arax reported from Fresno.