HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas judge cleared a woman Monday for a car accident that killed her fiance in 2004, after General Motors acknowledged that her car would have been among millions being recalled for a problem that may have contributed to the death. 
 
 Candice Anderson was driving a 2004 Saturn Ion when it suddenly veered off a road about 60 miles east of Dallas and slammed into a tree. Anderson, then 21, was severely injured when the car's air bags failed to deploy. Her 25-year-old fiance, Gene Erikson, who was a passenger, was killed. 
 
 She later pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the wreck. But during a hearing Monday, State District Judge Teresa Drum expunged the conviction from her record, according to officials in the Van Zandt County court and Anderson's attorney, Bob Hilliard. 
 
 In a letter given to the court ahead of the hearing, an attorney for the automaker confirmed that Anderson's Saturn would have been among 2.6 million GM vehicles recalled in February to address ignition switches that can slip out of the "run" position, causing the engines to stall and disabling power steering, brakes and air bags. 
 
 Anderson's crash "is one in which the recall condition may have caused or contributed to the frontal air bag non-deployment in the accident," attorney Richard C. Godfrey wrote. Hilliard provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press, and Godfrey confirmed its contents Monday. 
 
 Anderson was initially charged with criminally negligent homicide because there was no clear explanation at the time why the wreck occurred, according to court documents from the case. She pleaded guilty to a letter charge in 2006, and was sentenced to five years' probation. She also was ordered to perform 260 hours of community service, pay court costs and cover the costs of Erikson's funeral. 
 
 "GM knew this defect caused this death, yet instead of telling the truth watched silently as Candice was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter," Hilliard said Monday. "It took 10 years for GM to find its voice." 
 
 In a separate statement issued by the company, GM said it "cooperated fully by providing technical information that was requested to make a decision in this matter." The carmaker also said the issue in Anderson's case was for local law enforcement and courts to consider. 
 
 "That's why we took a neutral position on Ms. Anderson's case," the company's statement said. "It was appropriate for the court to determine the legal status of Ms. Anderson." 
 
 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. 
 
 Feinberg released data Monday showing he has agreed to make payments in 35 death claims and 44 injury cases, up from 33 death claims last week. Feinberg has received 225 death claims and 1,955 injury claims since August. The deadline to file claims is Jan. 31, 2015. 
 
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 AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Detroit. ||||| Family members of victims of defective GM ignition switches hold a press conference outside the Capitol April 1, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: AP) 
 
 A Texas judge Monday cleared a driver of criminal negligent homicide in a 2004 Texas crash after a lawyer for General Motors Co. said the air bags may not have inflated because of the ignition switch defect linked to at least 35 deaths. 
 
 In 2004, Candice Anderson — then 21 — lost control of her 2004 Saturn Ion while driving down a county road in East Texas. Her fiancé, Gene Mikale Erickson, was killed when the car left the road and hit a grove of trees head on. Air bags on both driver side and and passenger side failed to deploy. 
 
 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 suffered injuries including broken ribs and a injured liver. 
 
 "Due to the wreck, and being charged with criminal negligent homicide, I lost my chosen career," Anderson said in a statement. "I trained and worked as a (certified nurse's aide). I applied and was denied positions at numerous jobs due to my criminal record. ... This has not been an easy road. 
 
 Van Zandt County District Judge Teresa Drum granted Anderson's application for a writ of habeas corpus — typically the last chance a person convicted of a crime who has exhausted appeals can use to try to get a conviction expunged, said Robert Hilliard, a lawyer for Anderson. 
 
 "GM knew this defect caused this death yet, instead of telling the truth, watched silently as Candice was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. It took 10 years for GM to find its voice. How many district attorney's around the country are now wondering if they may have sent an innocent person to prison?" said Hilliard. "I call on GM to double its efforts to find all victims of this defect. If there were others who were wrongfully prosecuted, GM should take affirmative and aggressive steps to have those convictions immediately overturned." 
 
 On Monday, Hilliard released a letter from GM lawyer Richard Godfrey that confirmed "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." 
 
 "Candice Anderson has lived with this wrongful conviction for too long," Hilliard says. "GM allowed the victim to be convicted. Now, on the day of the hearing to prove it was GM and not Candice, GM admits what it has known since 2004." 
 
 GM spokesman Jim Cain earlier in the day said the automaker would cooperate fully with the court. "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. "That's why 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." 
 
 Cain also noted that the GM compensation program run by Kenneth Feinberg is set up to evaluate claims without consideration of contributory negligence. 
 
 Feinberg referred to a case like Anderson's when he announced GM's victim compensation program, and said he would consider a prosecution as "extraordinary circumstances" worthy of additional compensation. 
 
 Anderson told CNN last month she would accept a settlement from the GM victims compensation fund. "I am ready for it to be over. I just want to move on. I don't have the endurance for a lawsuit and a long-drawn process," Anderson said. 
 
 In July, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. called on GM CEO Mary Barra to back a pardon and said the Justice Department may hold GM accountable for failing to make the defect known when she was prosecuted. 
 
 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. 
 
 "I believe (GM's defect) caused her vehicle to seize up, locking her steering and making any control of her vehicle impossible. Based upon what I now know these issues were the direct cause of the loss of control of the vehicle," Dixon wrote. "It is my opinion that no action or omission of Ms. Anderson was the cause of the accident that led to her criminal charges. Had I known at the time that GM knew of these issues and has since admitted to such, I do not believe the grand jury would have indicted her." 
 
 DShepardson@detroitnews.com 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1r1T2vk ||||| In May 2007, five months before Ms. Anderson entered her guilty plea, G.M. had conducted an internal review of the crash and quietly ruled its car was to blame, but never let Ms. Anderson or local law enforcement officials know. 
 
 After the crash on Nov. 15, 2004, Ms. Anderson’s parents liquidated their 401(k) to retain a lawyer to defend her. While a deal with prosecutors spared her jail time, she was on probation for five years and paid more than $10,000 in fines and restitution. 
 
 She also suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a lacerated liver. But the guilt surrounding her own survival and her boyfriend’s death caused her more enduring pain, she said. 
 
 When the hearing was over on Monday, Ms. Anderson, her family, and Mr. Erickson’s mother, Rhonda, went together for the first time to visit Mr. Erickson’s grave. His headstone had been put up just last week, after his mother had struggled for years with the thought of purchasing one for her only child. 
 
 Ms. Anderson placed a bouquet of red roses on the grave after withdrawing a single one from the bunch. She said she handed the single rose to Ms. Erickson. 
 
 “This will change so many things,” Ms. Anderson said in the telephone interview. 
 
 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. 
 
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 Until this year, she wrestled with questions about her role in Mr. Erickson’s death. The police trooper who investigated the accident had deduced that Ms. Anderson was intoxicated before her drug test results came back. His police report referred to the seemingly inexplicable circumstances of the accident, her history of recreational drug use, “and Anderson’s behavior at the scene,” which was disoriented and emotional. 
 
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 G.M. did not disclose the switch’s role when federal safety regulators asked about the cause of the crash in a so-called death inquiry. Instead, in June 2007, the automaker wrote to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it had not assessed the cause of the crash when, in fact, it had: A G.M. engineer had found just a month earlier that power to the vehicle had most likely shut off. 
 
 The district attorney who prosecuted Ms. Anderson, Leslie Poynter Dixon, and the police trooper who investigated the accident had both said that if the ignition-switch defect had been publicly known at the time of the crash, certain details of the accident — like the lack of skid marks or evasive action — would have been seen differently. 
 
 “At the time, unbeknownst to Ms. Anderson or my office, there were issues regarding her 2004 Saturn Ion,” Ms. Poynter Dixon wrote in a letter in support of Ms. Anderson in July. “Had I known at the time that G.M. 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. Ms. Anderson learned of her accident’s inclusion in G.M.’s tally after Mr. Erickson’s mother sought confirmation from federal regulators at the request of The Times. 
 
 After Ms. Anderson’s story was first reported, her lawyer, Robert Hilliard, and federal lawmakers called on Mary T. Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, to support a pardon. 
 
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 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. Rick Perry of Texas to urge a pardon for Ms. Anderson. Both declined although they offered to submit “evidence to support” Ms. Anderson’s exoneration. 
 
 On Monday, Mr. Blumenthal praised the ruling. “Her plight demonstrates just how far the consequences of General Motors’ concealment go,” he said, “hurting not just direct victims of defective cars but also those who were blamed for the accidents even when G.M. knew full well what the cause had been.” 
 
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 Ms. Anderson said she still had not heard from G.M. directly. 
 
 “I don’t expect I ever will,” she said. Ms. Anderson said she would accept a payment from the automaker’s victim compensation program run by Kenneth R. Feinberg. “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. To be accepted to nursing school, she had to petition the Texas Board of Nursing and pay for a psychiatric examination to prove her mental stability. With her criminal record, she would have been barred from at-home caregiving and hospice work, and she had been worried about finding full-time work after graduation. 
 
 “Who wants someone taking care of their mother if they have homicide on their record?” she said. 
 
 Beyond its practical effects on her work, Ms. Anderson said her cleared record would significantly affect her life in other ways. She said that someday she would tell the story of her exoneration to her daughters, now 4 and 6. 
 
 “My heart is going to be a lot lighter to be able to tell them, ‘This is what happened, this horrible thing. And it wasn’t Mommy’s fault.’ ”
– 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.)