Alyssa Shepherd Appeal Doesn’t Surprise ProsecutorsFulton County prosecutors aren’t surprised by Alyssa Shepherd’s notice to appeal.
“Appealing a conviction is pretty typical,” Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rachel Arndt said. “It will be the office of the attorney general who handles the appeal, not our office, but our understanding is that their position is that what Alyssa did is not a crime, and that’s the basis of their appeal.”
Arndt explained that after a notice of appeal is filed, a chain of events kicks off.
“You’ll have the court staff now obligated to put together a transcript of the trial, and then the defense attorneys will have a certain amount of time to file an appellate brief. That is, their issues and basically a book report of their case. And then the attorney general’s office will have a certain amount of time to file a response brief.”?
Then, it’s waiting on the appellate court to decide what to do.
There are many options that the court can decide, Arndt said, including having an oral argument, which would be where the defense attorneys and the attorney generals will go to Indianapolis and argue their points of law. She said that doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes will if the court thinks there’s a unique point of law, but it’s not a retrial of the case. You don’t call any witnessess and you don’t have any exhibits in an oral argument.
Or, “the appellate court could reverse the decision entirely and say that’s right, it’s not a crime. Alyssa, you get out of jail. Or, they could remand it, which means they send it back to the trial court for whatever reason and that could come with instructions to retry it, redo the sentences, that could go a million different ways.”
Arndt said she has emailed with the family of Maverick Lowe – the boy seriously injured in the wreck – and explained what the process of an appeal could mean. She also said Prosecuting Attorney Mike Marrs has had some contact with Brittany Ingle, but she’s not sure of the details of that conversation.
“I think it will get denied. Statistically, it will probably be denied because that happens a lot when cases are appealed,” Arndt said, adding that this was a groundbreaking case and in Indiana it was going to help set some pretty groundbreaking rules and consequences for prosecuting reckless driving cases.
“If it gets retried, it’s like the first trial never happened. She’s (Shepherd) still looking at the same level of penalty,” she said, including that Shepherd could be convicted again and a judge deciding to give her more time.
Shepherd, 24, hit four children, around 7:15 a.m. Oct. 30, 2018, as the children were crossing Ind. 25 north of Rochester to get on their school bus. She killed 9-year-old Alivia Stahl and her 6-year-old twin brothers, Mason and Xzavier Ingle. 11-year-old Lowe was severely injured from the crash.
On Oct. 18, a jury found her guilty of reckless homicide, reckless driving causing bodily injury and criminal recklessness. She was sentenced by Fulton Superior Court Judge Greg Heller to four years in the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Shepherd had faced 21-1/2 years if given the maximum sentence.
A notice of appeal was filed Jan. 21 by Shepherd and her new attorney, Stacy R. Uliana.
