"Issues being discussed in this case are for local law enforcement and the courts to consider, and in a courtroom they are separate issues from the performance of the vehicle," he said. Anderson was convicted of criminal negligent homicide and paid $2,500 in fines and court costs along with performing 260 hours of community service, counseling and five years of probation. She also suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a lacerated liver. On Monday, James R. Cain, a spokesman for G.M., said in a statement: “We have taken a neutral position on Ms. Anderson’s case. It is appropriate for the court to determine the legal status of Ms. Anderson.” 
 
 The automaker’s public acknowledgment linking Ms. Anderson’s crash to the defective ignition switch came in a letter from G.M.’s lawyers that was submitted by her lawyers to the district judge in Van Zandt County, Tex. In July, the East Texas district attorney at the time, Leslie Poynter Dixon, wrote a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons, asking the conviction be set aside in the wake of the new information about the defect. Now, on the day of the hearing to prove it was GM and not Candice, GM admits what it has known since 2004." knew of these issues and has since admitted to such, I do not believe the grand jury would have indicted her for intoxication manslaughter.” 
 
 In May, The New York Times reported that General Motors considered Mr. Erickson a victim of its faulty ignition switch. Photo 
 
 At a congressional hearing in July, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, called Ms. Anderson’s indictment “a perversion of the justice process,” and asked Ms. Barra and Michael P. Millikin, G.M.’s top lawyer, to contact Gov. A federal lawsuit filed against GM by Anderson and Erickson's family was dropped after the parties agreed to resolve their claims through a compensation program being run by Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney hired by GM to compensate victims of ignition switch crashes. “My plan is to take the compensation and take this clearing of my record and move on with my life.” 
 
 Mr. Cain said that Mr. Feinberg’s compensation program “is set up to evaluate claims without consideration of contributory negligence.” 
 
 Having long worked as a home health aide and currently in pursuit of a nursing degree, Ms. Anderson said she had suffered professionally from being a convicted criminal. “Who wants someone taking care of their mother if they have homicide on their record?” she said.
– Guilt has been the prominent emotion dogging Candice Anderson in the past decade since her fiance, Gene Erickson, was killed in a 2004 car crash while she was driving. Yesterday, some of that guilt was alleviated when a Texas judge removed the criminally negligent homicide conviction from her record after determining her Saturn Ion was one of millions of GM vehicles recalled earlier this year for an ignition switch issue, the AP reports. "The crash involving Ms. Anderson is one in which the recall condition may have caused or contributed to the air bag nondeployment in the accident," a GM lawyer wrote in a letter released yesterday in Van Zandt County court. Anderson's lawyer blasted the company: "GM knew this defect caused this death, yet, instead of telling the truth, watched silently as Candice was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter," he tells the Detroit News. "This has not been an easy road," Anderson says in a statement cited by the News. Her parents had to empty retirement accounts to pay for her attorney, and she was forced to pony up at least $10,000 more in fines and restitution—she avoided jail time through a plea deal and served five years' probation, the New York Times reports. She was "denied positions at numerous jobs" due to her record, she tells the News. And she sustained serious injuries herself, though she says most of the toll has been from the guilt she's felt since that day: Until the GM problems were revealed, she anguished over what part she played in her fiance's death, the Times notes. She tells the paper that the ruling will finally enable her to tell her two young daughters, "This is what happened, this horrible thing. And it wasn't mommy’s fault." (Recently uncovered GM emails don't help the company's case.)