A 73-year-old Green River man who walked into the local sheriff’s office last summer and announced he’d fondled a preteen girl decades earlier pleaded “no contest” on Thursday.
Currently out of jail on bond, Randy Jay Nelsen appeared Thursday in Sweetwater County District Court in Green River to change his plea from not guilty to no contest, pursuant to a plea agreement.
A no contest plea functions like a guilty plea, except it can spare a defendant some liability and the requirement to confess to the crime in court.
Nelsen was originally scheduled to be sentenced Thursday as well, but Sweetwater County District Court Judge Suzannah Robinson announced a last-minute change of plans after speaking to the people involved in the case.
Nelsen had some scar tissue removed from his eye recently, and expects to have another similar procedure in mid-August, Robinson related from those talks.
The judge delayed his sentencing to a yet-unscheduled date to accommodate the follow-up surgery. But she warned him she won’t do that forever.
“Health always changes,” said Robinson. "I can’t keep continuing the sentencing based on that because I never know — you never know.”
The judge told Nelsen to explain to his doctor that the issue “needs to be taken care of, because you need to come back for criminal sentencing and you don’t know what the outcome is going to be.”
Nelsen answered: “Yes, your honor.”
The Arrangement
In a plea agreement Nelsen signed Thursday, the Sweetwater County Attorney’s Office is agreeing to recommend a sentence of between four and five years in prison, plus other normal court fees and costs.
The prosecutor’s office also agreed to drop another charge of second-degree sexual assault.
Nelsen opted for a no-contest plea rather than a guilty plea because, while he could remember the chief elements of the sexual crime he reportedly committed against a preteen child sometime between 1989 and 1991, the details were “hazy,” said Nelsen’s defense attorney Rob Spence.
Sweetwater County Deputy Attorney Hillary McKinney agreed with the arrangement, she said.
Court Docs Say …
Nelsen was charged Jan. 2.
On July 12, 2024, at about 8:20 a.m., Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ashley Merrell was on duty when she learned there was a man in the lobby asking to talk to an investigator, says an affidavit based on a report Merrell wrote.
The man, Nelsen, “needed to confess,” he told sheriff’s personnel, according to the document.
Merrell took Nelsen to an interview room and told him his Miranda rights. Nelsen then told her he was fondling a girl’s breasts when the girl would have been 12 or 13 years old, Merrell wrote.
Though the man said the incident was about 20 years ago, it actually would rather have been in about 1990, based on the female’s year of birth, which is listed in the affidavit.
Merrell met with the girl five days later. The document says the female, now an adult woman, confirmed that Nelsen had done this, but said it was when she was about 10 or 11. She also said he fondled her genital area, the affidavit relates from her interview.
Booked Out
McKinney charged Nelsen with one count of second-degree sexual assault, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and another of third-degree sexual assault, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. These accuse Nelsen of sexually abusing the girl between 1989 and 1992.
Nelsen was booked into the Sweetwater County Detention Center on Jan. 8 and released that same day, Sweetwater County Sheriff’s spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily in an email at the time.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
