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No Verdict Reached In Poisoned Marine Trial

POSTED: 4:01 pm PST January 26, 2007
UPDATED: 7:26 pm PST January 26, 2007

Jurors deliberated a few hours Friday without reaching a verdict in the trial of a woman accused of poisoning her 23-year-old Marine husband so she could cash in on his $250,000 life insurance policy.

The jury asked for a CD player in the deliberation room and left early in the afternoon.

Deliberations were set to resume Monday morning.

In closing arguments Thursday, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn told the jury that Cynthia Sommer initially did a good job of convincing everyone that she was a grieving widow devastated over the Feb. 18, 2002, death of Sgt. Todd Sommer.

But the 33-year-old defendant's words and actions after her spouse died showed otherwise, Gunn said.

In the weeks after her second husband's death, Sommer paid $5,400 for breast implants, had sex with four different people, hosted loud parties at her house and participated in a wet T-shirt and thong contest in Tijuana, the prosecutor said.

"This is not somebody who's grieving," Gunn told the jury. "This is somebody who's celebrating."

Sommer made four inquiries about money in the first five hours after his death, the prosecutor said.

Gunn said the defendant was the only person who could have poisoned her husband. "Nobody except the defendant. Nobody," the prosecutor said.

She suggested that the defendant was able to get arsenic -- possibly in the bait from retail ant traps -- and give a large amount to the victim.

Three agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service were able to buy arsenic through a lab supply store and on the Internet, the prosecutor noted.

But defense attorney Robert Udell said there was no evidence that his client poisoned her spouse, or that the Marine even died from acute arsenic poisoning. He said the victim died of a heart attack, which was the finding on the original death certificate.

"There is no arsenic," Udell told the jury in his closing argument. "That's one reasonable conclusion you can reach."

A test in 2003 for heavy metals showed arsenic levels more than 1,000 times the normal level in his liver and 250 times above normal in his kidneys, but Udell questioned the standard operating procedures of the military laboratory that conducted the metals test.

Defense experts testified at the trial that the victim should have had large amounts of arsenic present in other body parts if he was poisoned.

Sommer testified that she loved her husband and that he was supportive of her getting breast augmentation surgery, which she underwent two months after being widowed.

The defendant met the victim after a failed marriage that produced three children, and they were married in 1999 and had a child together.

Sommer told agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that her husband got "violently ill" on Feb. 8, 2002, 10 days before his death.

She told investigators that he sought treatment, eventually recovered and went back to work but complained the night before he died that his heart was fluttering.

The day after Todd Sommer died, his wife got a $6,000 death gratuity payment from the military, and a month later, she received more than $250,000 from his military life insurance policy, Gunn said.

Gunn said the defendant lied when she told authorities her husband went with her for the initial consultation with the plastic surgeon for the breast implants.

Sommer, who is charged with murder and special circumstances of murder by poison and murder for financial gain, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.


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