NEW YORK, New York – Cynthia Sommer, released from jail last year after a San Diego jury convicted her of first-degree murder, is suing the federal agencies that investigated her and the district attorney who prosecuted her more than two years ago.
On Thursday, Sommer filed a multimillion-dollar suit in federal district court in San Diego, California alleging fraud, false imprisonment, violation of her civil rights and other tortious conduct on the part of the federal and state agencies and individuals involved.
She is seeking $20,000,000 in damages and other relief including a court order that murder charges can never be refiled against her.
Sommer was arrested in November 2005 and charged with poisoning her husband, Todd, 23, an active duty Marine who died at their home on the Miramar base nearly four years earlier. Sommer was tried and convicted in San Diego in January 2007. The district attorney presented evidence at trial that tissues recovered from Todd Sommer at autopsy showed high levels of arsenic in his liver and kidneys.
The trial judge threw out the murder conviction and ordered a new trial in late 2007 after finding that her attorney, Robert Udell, committed tactical errors which deprived her of a fair trial.
Sommer continues to claim that the tissues tested were contaminated in the government lab. While awaiting a new trial, her new attorney, Allen Bloom, requested that the state search for more tissues that may have been recovered from Todd Sommer and never tested for the presence of arsenic. In early 2008, the government did, indeed, find some tissues preserved in paraffin and sent them to an independent lab for testing. When the results came back negative for the presence of arsenic, Sommer was immediately released from the San Diego County jail where she had spent about a two and a half years.
The district attorney dismissed the first-degree murder charge for the time being but wants the right to bring charges in the future should new incriminating evidence arise. The current dismissal is “without prejudice.” Sommer wants the district attorney to dismiss “with prejudice” which means she could never be charged again. Another hearing on that issue is scheduled for this Friday in San Diego state court.
Since April 2008, Sommer has been re-establishing herself. She is now enrolled in college, has custody of her four children, and plans to work with the Innocence Project. Her youngest child, Christian, is the son of Todd Sommer. Christian, now 9 years old, was not quite two when his father died.
Sommer is suing the United States of America, three NCIS Special Agents Rob Terwilliger, Rick Rendon, and Mark Ridley, the Naval Medical Center in San Diego County, the Medical Examiner’s Office of San Diego County, Glenn N. Wagner (chief medical examiner in San Diego), the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn who handled the trial in 2007.
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