HOUSTON (CN) - A jury found a Houston doctor guilty of aggravated assault Friday, convinced by prosecutors that she poisoned her lover with a substance she put in his coffee.
The jury returned the verdict Friday morning in the case of former MD Anderson doctor Ana Gonzalez-Angulo.
The dozens of onlookers and reporters on hand had little time to digest the felony conviction as Harris County Judge Katharine Cabaniss immediately began the punishment phase of the trial, where the jurors will decide how much prison time Gonzalez-Angulo deserves.
The maximum penalty for the charge is life in prison.
Gonzalez-Angulo was charged with felony aggravated assault and arrested in May 2013, after her ex-lover and research partner, MD Anderson doctor George Blumenschein, told police she had poisoned him in January of that year.
Blumenschein told police that on the morning of Jan. 27, 2013, Gonzalez-Angulo prepared and gave him a cup of coffee that tasted sweet - something that surprised him because he ordinarily takes his coffee black.
Gonzalez-Angulo told him she had put Splenda in the coffee, court records show.
Hours later, Blumenschein began slurring his words and feeling dizzy, and went to an MD Anderson emergency room where tests revealed he had been poisoned with ethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting liquid used to make antifreeze.
Gonzalez-Angulo's defense team told jurors the fact that she twice sipped from the cup proved she had not spiked the drink.
But Blumenschein testified that he was not sure if Gonzalez-Angulo had actually taken a drink.
Prosecutors painted Gonzalez-Angulo as a mistress jealous of Blumenschein's efforts to have children with his fiancée Evette Toney.
Gonzalez-Angulo maintained the stoic demeanor she exhibited throughout her trial when she heard the jury's verdict.
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