A Riverside woman who spiked her mother’s oatmeal with Xanax will be resentenced after she won an appeal Nov. 9.
Riverside County Superior Judge John Molly sentenced Deborah Ann Peterson to nine years in prison after he found her guilty in a bench trial of poisoning, elder abuse likely to produce great bodily injury, dissuading a witness and assault with deadly weapon.
The three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, reversed the counts of poisoning and assault with a deadly weapon, accepting Peterson’s argument that benzodiazepine (Xanax) is a poison, and a deadly weapon, only in certain amounts. The court did not have the evidence Peterson placed a deadly amount in her mother’s oatmeal, the court ruled in an unpublished opinion.
Kevin Lindsley represented Peterson on appointment by the appellate court. Justice Marsha Slough wrote the opinion, which Associate Justice Douglas Miller and Associate Justice Michael Raphael joined.
Case No: E074793(MF) & E075531
Riverside Case No: RIF1703193 & RIF1904529
Read the ruling here.
