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Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
April 18, 2008 California
SAN DIEGO — A woman once convicted of killing her Marine husband with arsenic to pay for breast implants was cleared Thursday after new tests showed no traces of poison.
Prosecutors who were preparing for Cynthia Sommer's second trial found that previously untested samples of Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer's tissue showed no arsenic. Earlier tests of his liver, presented at the woman's first trial, found levels 1,020 times above normal.
A recently retained government expert speculated that the earlier samples were contaminated, prosecutors wrote in a motion filed in San Diego Superior Court. The expert said he found the initial results "very puzzling" and "physiologically improbable."
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said no proof of contamination existed but offered no other explanation.
Sommer was released Thursday night after more than two years behind bars.
April 18, 2008 California
SAN DIEGO — A woman once convicted of killing her Marine husband with arsenic to pay for breast implants was cleared Thursday after new tests showed no traces of poison.
Prosecutors who were preparing for Cynthia Sommer's second trial found that previously untested samples of Marine Sgt. Todd Sommer's tissue showed no arsenic. Earlier tests of his liver, presented at the woman's first trial, found levels 1,020 times above normal.
A recently retained government expert speculated that the earlier samples were contaminated, prosecutors wrote in a motion filed in San Diego Superior Court. The expert said he found the initial results "very puzzling" and "physiologically improbable."
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said no proof of contamination existed but offered no other explanation.
Sommer was released Thursday night after more than two years behind bars.