No more prison time for woman in police assault
By ROBERT GAVIN
Published 05:26 p.m., Thursday, June 23, 2011
ALBANY — For the second time in three years, Danielle Nisselbeck has been convicted of felony assault for kicking an Albany police officer in the groin outside a Lark Street bar.
This time, she is not going to prison, after pleading guilty Thursday.
The 28-year-old woman will receive time already served bars, ending a controversial case that started when Nisselbeck and her brothers went out to celebrate her birthday on Jan. 31, 2009.
Albany police came to disperse a confrontation between her party and another during the wee hours of Feb. 1. She assaulted the officer after police arrived a second time.
Nisselbeck was convicted at trial of second-degree assault. In July 2009, Judge Thomas Breslin sentenced her to four years in state prison. She served nearly two years.
Before the trial, she and her brother Justin Nisselbeck, who also had been charged, rejected a joint plea to serve no more than six months in jail. He was later acquitted.
Nisselbeck’s attorney, Matthew Hug, successfully argued to an appeals court that Breslin should have allowed the jury to consider the lesser-included charge of second-degree obstruction of governmental administration to second-degree assault.
Jurors convicted Nisselbeck of both crimes, but were not given the option to consider the obstruction charge instead of assault.