grants new trial for Marine widow

A judge ordered a new trial Friday for a woman who was convicted of poisoning her Marine husband with arsenic and using the life insurance to pay for breast implants.

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San Diego Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh found that Cynthia Sommer, 34, received ineffective representation from her former defense attorney.

Deddeh said the attorney's errors allowed prosecutors to introduce evidence about Sommer's wild partying immediately after her husband's death.

Sommer's former attorney, Robert Udell, told the judge that he committed tactical errors, including failing to call witnesses to adequately refute prosecutors' theories about the source of the arsenic.

Udell did not respond immediately to a telephone message after the ruling.

A jury convicted Sommer in January of first-degree murder by poisoning and for financial gain. She faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if Deddeh had denied the retrial.

She remains in custody without bail, though her current attorney, Allen Bloom, said he plans to request bail conditions at a hearing set for Dec. 12 in San Diego.

Sgt. Todd Sommer, 23, was in top condition when he collapsed and died Feb. 18, 2002, at the couple's home on the Marine Corps' Miramar base in San Diego.

His death was initially ruled a heart attack. Tests of his liver later found levels of arsenic 1,020 times above normal.

Sommer's co-workers testified during the trial that the widow didn't grieve quietly in the weeks after the death. The couple married in 1999.

Rather than going into seclusion, she got her breasts enlarged and, witnesses said, joined wet T-shirt contests at nightclubs and had casual sex with other military men.

Prosecutors said Sommer wanted a more luxurious lifestyle than she could afford on the $1,700 monthly salary her husband brought home and saw the $250,000 military life insurance policy as a way to "set herself free."

Sommer, who moved to Florida after the death, cried on the stand Jan. 17, dabbing her eyes as she recounted her husband's last moments. She said during cross-examination that she hadn't been able to envision a future with him.