Top court to hear woman's appeal

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a Montgomery County, Pa., woman who was convicted under an antiterrorism law for spreading deadly chemicals around the home of her husband's mistress.

The justices said in an order Friday that they would revisit the case of Carol Anne Bond of Lansdale, who was given a six-year prison term for violating a federal law involving the use of chemical weapons.

In 2011, the court unanimously sided with Bond to allow her to challenge her conviction despite arguments from federal prosecutors and judges that she should not even be allowed to appeal the verdict. Lower courts subsequently rejected the appeal.

Bond says she is in prison over a domestic dispute that resulted in a thumb burn for a onetime friend who became her husband's lover. Bond was convicted in federal court of trying to poison the woman by spreading toxic chemicals around her house and car and on her mailbox.

Her argument is that the case should have been dealt with by local authorities, as most crimes are. Instead, a federal grand jury indicted her on two counts of possessing and using a chemical weapon. The charges were based on a federal antiterrorism law passed to fulfill the United States' international treaty obligations under the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction.

The case began when Bond, unable to bear children, learned that her best friend, Myrlinda Haynes, was pregnant. Bond's excitement about the news turned to pain when she found out that her husband of more than 14 years, Clifford, had impregnated Haynes.

Vowing revenge, Carol Bond, a laboratory technician, stole the chemical 10-chloro-10H phenoxarsine from the company where she worked and purchased potassium dichromate from Amazon.com. Both can be deadly if ingested or exposed to the skin at sufficiently high levels.

Over several months starting in late 2006, Bond spread the chemicals on Haynes' door handle and in the tailpipe of Haynes' car. Haynes, noticing the chemicals and suffering a minor burn, called the local police, who did not investigate to her satisfaction. She then found some of the chemicals on her mailbox and called the U.S. Postal Service, which videotaped Bond going back and forth between Haynes' car and the mailbox with the chemicals.

Postal inspectors arrested her. Bond pleaded guilty and was given six years in prison.