A few months later, she accepted a pro bono assignment from the Florida Office of the Capital Collateral Representative (CCR) to assist in efforts to stay Ted Bundy's imminent execution on multiple murder convictions.
Although she had no previous first-hand experience in criminal law or the appeals process, she and co-counsel James Earl Coleman Jr. were able to secure three stays before Bundy was finally executed on January 24, 1989.
[2] In 1989, she was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Parole, and later served as general counsel at Adcom Worldwide and legal counsel/privacy officer at Computer Network Technology.
[9] In addition to a detailed description of the appeals, motions, and other legal maneuvers that were employed in the attempt to save her client from the electric chair, Nelson describes her own intellectual and emotional development during that three-year period.
She alleged that Grisham's book The Chamber, "blatantly appropriated central themes, plot twists, characters and descriptive details" from Defending the Devil.