Ellie Nesler went on trial for murder Tuesday, three months after she walked into a courtroom and took the law into her own hands.
No one disputes that on April 2 the 40-year-old single mother fatally shot Daniel Driver, 35, a convicted child molester accused of molesting her son and three other local boys. Now her hometown jury must decide two questions: Was it murder or manslaughter, and was she temporarily insane when she acted?"I feel pretty confident," Nesler said, climbing the courthouse stairs as jury selection began. "I don't expect a conviction."
As the trial got under way Tuesday, reporters again thronged this tiny Gold Rush town. Nesler supporters demonstrated outside the century-old courthouse, and more than 100 Tuolumne County residents filed in to see whether they will be selected to judge the woman whose act of vengeance vaulted her to worldwide renown.
Potential jurors, by turns bemused or bewildered, shuffled past a horde of reporters and a sheriff's deputy, who scanned them with a hand-held metal detector.
Inside, Superior Court Judge William G. Polley instructed them to stay away from news accounts of the trial and imposed a gag order on all participants. Each potential juror was given an extensive questionnaire to discover whether pretrial publicity had hardened their opinions.
Under California law, only the defense can request that a trial be moved to a different county. Tony Serra, the flamboyant San Francisco defense attorney who built a reputation representing Black Panthers and Hell's Angels, is not likely to abandon a town still so enamored of its frontier roots.
Serra will attempt to prove that Nesler suffered a temporary "moral blindness," that she was momentarily insane when she emptied her .25-caliber pistol into Driver's neck and head.
If he proves his case, Nesler will be placed under psychiatric observation for six months. If she is convicted of murder, she will spend 25 years to life in state prison.
During a break in Tuesday's proceedings, Nesler attempted to distance herself from the notion of "frontier justice," saying she would never condone killing.
State prosecutors accuse her of using methamphetamine the day of the shooting and of having plotted the deed for at least two years.