Back in April of last year, a single mother of three named Raquel Nelson took her kids out for pizza and to Wal-Mart to buy birthday gifts. They missed a bus that runs once per hour and were late getting back to their home in Marietta, Ga., an Atlanta suburb.
When the bus finally did drop them off in front of their apartment complex, they had to cross a busy four-lane road and stopped at the median to wait for passing cars. That’s when Nelson’s 4-year-old son A.J. slipped out of her grasp and ran out in front of a car.
A.J. was killed by a driver named Jerry Guy, who fled the scene and then later admitted to police he had been drinking and taking painkillers that night. He is had limited vision due to being blind in one eye. Oh, and he had also been convicted of two prior hit-and-runs.
Jerry Guy served six months in jail and was released. You’d probably assume the legal saga of A.J. Nelson’s death ended there, but it didn’t.
The story gets much more disgusting. In July, Nelson, the grieving mother, was convicted of second-degree homicide by vehicle in the killing of her own son right in front of her. She faced a three year prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter — as a pedestrian.
As Radley Balko put it in the Huffington Post, “Nelson could spend up to six times as many months in jail as the man who struck her son and then fled the scene. Nelson’s crime: jaywalking.”
As you can see from the diagram, Nelson and her family had to cross a treacherous suburban highway.
Interestingly, bloggers who regularly write about urban development and planning issues have been among the loudest defenders of Nelson. Cobb County is a suburban wasteland of horribly anti-pedestrian development. There was no crosswalk between a large apartment complex and the bus stop across the street! You can’t expect people to walk an extra quarter of a mile to the nearest crosswalk.
So the Cobb County prosecutor made the truly soulless (if not racially biased) decision to prosecute this woman for the accidental death of her own son. And when the case went to trial back in July, the jury included not a single member who rides public transportation regularly. These same heartless idiots convicted the woman, of course. Then when announcing the verdict, Judge Katherine Tanksley made the extraordinary offer of a choice between probation for a year or a new trial.
Now, at this point, most people would just take the year of probation. Move on, get out of the spotlight, try to get past the tragedy as quickly as possible. But Nelson didn’t take the deal. Instead she asked for a second trial (which is set to start this month).
I really admire this woman. She could have easily taken the probation. But she stood up and decided to risk the chance of going to prison to fight for justice. Sometimes it’s just about the principle.
