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Raquel Nelson Goes to Appeals Court

The "jaywalking mom" will appeal a judge's decision in an attempt to have charges of her 4-year-old son's jaywalking death dismissed.

 

Raquel Nelson, the Marietta mom convicted last year of three charges in the hit-and-run death of her 4-year-old son, will make her appeal Tuesday of a judge’s decision not to throw out charges of vehicular homicide and crossing outside a crosswalk in the jaywalking death.

Nelson's case is one of two on the calendar for the Georgia Court of Appeals, which has received filings in her appeal since the fall.

After a jury convicted Nelson of second-degree vehicular homicide, reckless conduct and crossing outside a crosswalk in July, Cobb County State Court Judge Kathryn Tanksley sentenced Nelson to a year of probation with the option for a retrial. Nelson chose to have the new trial.

Tanksley dismissed the reckless conduct charge in October but denied a defense motion to dismiss the other two charges.

Nelson’s appeal in November put her retrial on hold.

Lawyer Steve Sadow will make the case for Nelson's appeal Tuesday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

A three-judge panel—Presiding Judge Charles B. Mikell and Judges M. Yvette Miller and Keith R. Blackwell—will hear the appeal.

Nelson’s 4-year-old son, A.J. Newman, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in April 2010 as Nelson and her three children tried to cross darkened Austell Road from a Cobb Community Transit bus stop to their Marietta apartment complex. The nearest crosswalk was a quarter-mile away.

The driver who hit the boy and drove away, Jerry Guy, served six months in jail in 2010 after pleading guilty.

The remote possibility that Nelson could be sentenced to three years in jail, six times as much as Guy served, contributed to local, national and international outrage over her case.

Related Topics: Jaywalking Death, jaywalking mom, pedestrian death, and raquel nelson

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