Test clears woman of poisoning husband

SAN DIEGO, April 18 (UPI) -- Prosecutors in San Diego have dropped charges against a 34-year-old woman convicted in January of killing her U.S. Marine husband.

Cynthia Sommer was freed from the Los Colinas jail after spending two years and four months behind bars on charges of fatally poisoning Sgt. Todd Sommer with arsenic, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday.

In freeing Sommer, prosecutors said the conclusions of a new group of toxicology experts has cast doubt on poisoning as a cause of Sgt. Sommer's death.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis told a news conference Thursday "as soon as we had the information that pointed to reasonable doubt, we brought this case this afternoon to get the matter dismissed."

Sommer, 23, died in February, 2002 after collapsing at the couple's home at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.

At first doctors said he died of natural causes but tests later found high levels of arsenic in his liver and kidneys.

Court documents said a lab in Canada re-tested Sommers' tissue samples this month and found no evidence of arsenic.