The Supreme Court will decide whether an anti-terrorism law should have been used to prosecute a jealous woman who tried to harm her husband's mistress with deadly chemicals.
The high court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from Carol Anne Bond of Lansdale, Pa. She was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to trying to harm her husband's mistress, Myrlinda Haynes, with toxic chemicals that she stole from her workplace.
Bond has been in prison since her arrest in June 2007.
Prosecutors charged her with a federal chemical weapons violation, a law that Bond's lawyers said was intended to deal with rogue states and terrorists, not a woman in a love triangle. They want the court to throw out her conviction, saying Bond should have been prosecuted under state law instead of in federal court.
Bond, a laboratory technician, had stolen the chemical potassium dichromate — which is potentially deadly if ingested — from the company where she worked. Bond said she put the chemicals on Haynes' door handle and in the tailpipe of Haynes' car.
Haynes was not injured.
Bond's husband, Clifford, had a child with Haynes while married to Bond. Haynes had contacted police and postal authorities after finding the chemicals at her home.