SAN DIEGO -- Prosecutors Tuesday decided against seeking the death penalty for a woman accused of poisoning her Marine husband at Miramar and using the life insurance payout for breast implants and nights on the town.

Cynthia Sommer, 32, is charged with murder and special circumstance allegations of murder by poison and murder for financial gain in the Feb. 18, 2002, death of 23-year-old Sgt. Todd Sommer.

Authorities said it was initially believed that the victim died from cardiac arrhythmia.

A year later, when a heavy metals test revealed high levels of arsenic in the victim's system, his widow became the target of a murder investigation.

The defendant moved to Florida from San Diego in 2002 with a new boyfriend, an ex-Marine, within weeks of the autopsy on her husband's body, authorities said.

She was extradited from West Palm Beach, Fla., to San Diego in March.

Sommer appeared Tuesday before Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh, who denied a prosecution motion to issue a protective order to stop defense attorney Robert Udell from showing reporters items of evidence that might not be introduced at trial.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn told the judge that Udell's decision to release the defendant's 911 call to police represented a "clear and present danger" to the people's right to a fair trial.

Gunn said Udell talked to the media about things that only Sommer could testify to, if she chooses to take the witness stand at her trial.

The prosecutor told the judge that she didn't want prospective jurors to be tainted by things they heard in hallway interviews rather than in court testimony.

On the 911 tape, the defendant is heard frantically telling her husband not to die and trying to perform CPR on him.

Gunn alleges Sommer's actions were "all an act."

Deddeh told Udell that releasing the 911 tape was not appropriate, but refused to issue a protective order.

Udell said he released the tape in response to "significant pretrial publicity" against his client.

The attorney said Sommer would testify in her own defense, and that the 911 tape would be played for jurors.

"The defense in this case is -- she's innocent. She didn't commit the crime," Udell told the judge.

Deddeh denied a defense motion to set bail for Sommer, leaving the defendant in a no-bail status.

Udell argued that Sommer cooperated with the investigation and didn't try to flee when authorities told her they were investigating her in connection with her husband's death.

But the prosecutor told the judge that the crime was particularly "gruesome" in that she watched her husband suffer for a couple of days.

"She didn't run because she thought she had gotten away with it," Gunn told the judge.

The defendant -- added as a beneficiary to her husband's life insurance policy in July 2001 -- received $250,587 one month after he died, according to a forensic accountant's testimony at a preliminary hearing last month.

With the life insurance money, Sommer paid more than $5,000 for breast augmentation, set up $122,000 in trust accounts for her four children, paid off a $12,916 credit card bill and a minivan and made other miscellaneous purchases, the forensic accountant testified.

Gunn said Sommer partied "like a rock star" following her husband's death, staying out all night and picking up a conviction for child neglect.

Udell said his client didn't benefit from her husband's death, loved him and had no reason to kill him.

The attorney said prosecutors had no evidence linking his client to the arsenic they claim she used to poison the victim.

Experts testified at the preliminary hearing that arsenic levels found in the victim's liver tissue were more than 1,000 times the normal level at the time of his death.

Trial was set for Jan. 2.