Once the Jerry’s death cause was known to the public due to coroner’s insistence on an autopsy, news correspondents invaded Jerry Sternadel’s ranch, but two important events occured.
First, Tom Bradley knew about Jerry’s death being profiled as murder, so he calls the police and tells them about how he got sick after drinking the cranberry juice. He voluntarily accepts to do a blood test and the results came back positive from arsenic levels. Then, after this, the police started to investigate the case deeper to discover where the poison came from. It was traced to a bottle of cranberry juice -Jerry’s favorite, the one Tom Bradley also drank and got sick- that was in a trash bag on the Sternadel estate.
They were able to trace it since they
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Hell broke loose in the courtroom when they found her guilty, his husband got enraged and was held down by the deputy’s sheriff. But there words are short to describe what happened at the sentencing hearing the following day: in a unexpected plot twist (I’m feeling dizzy with so many twists) the jury suggested 10 years of probation and a 10 thousand dollars fine.
Yeah, you read that correctly.
Let’s put it in context. Texas is a state where capital punishment is legal and enforced regularly. Actually, what we usually call “first degree murder” is not called that way in Texas, but “capital murder” as premeditated murder is the crime that can lead you to a death sentence. That does not mean it always does, but at least it leads to a very heavy prison sentence, normally life imprisonment.
Tim Cole, said the verdict was a complete and utmost blow. "It was a case that was not the strongest on the evidence, it was a circumstantial case (…) so we were pleased that we got the conviction, but not so happy with the punishment the jury assessed." Everyone was horrified, the sentence was considered atrociously shameful. How did a State like Texas so proud of having a tough judiciary system lets a convicted murderer walk free so