Justice Elusive For Aurora Family, Texas Prosecutors After Jury's Error
AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) - As adults fight in court over a seemingly simple procedural mistake, it's a 12-year-old boy who continues to pay the price.
Two years ago, Nicolas Mata and his father traveled from Colorado to Mexico when a drunk driver slammed into their SUV near Lubbock, Texas, seriously injuring Nicolas, then 10, and costing him his left leg.
"He doesn't like to be different," Nicolas' mother, Gloria Hernandez, said.
But life for Nicolas today is different. In Aurora, where he lives with his mother, he's learning to walk again while the man whose recklessness took his leg is walking free.
In June 2013, while headed home from a bar, Sammy Carl Williams veered off the road and crashed into a Chevy Tahoe driven by Nicolas' father. The impact left Nicolas in the middle of the road with his leg barely intact.
Williams didn't stop.
In August, a Lynn County, Texas, jury found him guilty of two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one count of intoxicated assault and two counts of failure to stop and render aid.
At his sentencing, jurors intended to send Williams, 48, to prison for 10 years, but they checked the wrong box on the sentencing form. They meant to slap Williams with a decade behind bars and probation -- with the expectation he'd receive both. He only got probation, however.
"We don't know how all 12 of us misunderstood the exact same way," juror Jenni McClelland said.
She told Judge Carter Schildknecht she and the other jurors made a mistake. But Schildknecht did not make a correction.
"Two of the jury members got very upset and cried because we did not intend for him to just go free," McClelland said.
Williams' defense attorney, Mark Snodgrass, said he was caught off-guard by what happened.
"Yeah, I was mildly surprised," Snodgrass said.
"I have never seen it happen," prosecutor Michael Munk added.
He asked for a mistrial, but the judge denied his motion.
"My argument to the judge was, 'Hey Judge, you are about to impose a sentence that is not that of the jury's, and this is a manifest injustice.' I asked for a mistrial and a new trial on punishment, and that, too, was denied," Munk said.
To Hernandez, the outcome of a horrendous chapter in their lives -- with Williams free and her son's future irrevocably altered -- seems unfairly reversed.
"He's done something so horrible that he doesn't deserve forgiveness. All my baby wants is his leg back and he can't get it," she said.
Today, Nicolas wants to be a police officer someday with an eye on keeping dangerous drivers -- like Williams -- off the road.
"When someone is drinking, and I see them driving drunk, I can pull them over," the soft-spoken seventh-grader said.
In the meantime, prosecutors are pursuing every appellate procedure.
"I want him to go to prison," Hernandez said. "I want him to do the 20, 30 years he was supposed to get."
