The Daily Populous Sunday May 12nd, 2024 night edition
Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by metacyan

An Arizona woman who was charged with trying to kill her husband by poisoning his coffee daily for months has reportedly avoided jail time and been ordered to spend three years on probation.

Melody Feliciano Johnson received her punishment this week after striking a plea deal with prosecutors that allowed her to plead guilty in April to two counts of adding a poison or harmful substance to food or drink, according to the Arizona news website azfamily.com.

She had initially been charged with attempted murder, a more serious felony. The reduced charges left her facing up to two years in prison on each count. But state court judge Javier Chon-Lopez opted for probation, ordering her to undergo a mental health evaluation and requiring her to abstain from contacting her estranged husband unless it is in a legal context, such as their pending divorce, as azfamily.com noted.

Chon-Lopez took note of how the husband, Roby Johnson, did not want Feliciano Johnson to be imprisoned, CNN reported. The network said the couple are living together with their child while waiting for their divorce to be finalized.

As part of a plea deal, Feliciano Johnson was required to admit that she had put trace amounts of bleach in her husband’s coffee pot on two separate instances in July 2023.

She had drawn Roby Johnson’s suspicion after he noticed a foul taste to his coffee at the end of March that year while he was stationed in Germany as a member of the US air force.

Roby Johnson continued to drink his coffee for the next few weeks, and when he noticed the odd taste lingering, he bought pool chemical testing strips.

The strips did not detect anything unusual with the faucet water but indicated high levels of chlorine in the coffee pot. Johnson then set up a camera in his house which recorded Melody pouring something into his coffee pot.

At that time, Roby Johnson quit drinking coffee he made in that pot – but he pretended to continue because he did not want to report his wife to authorities in Germany.

The couple moved back to the US on 28 June. He set up hidden cameras again at their home at an air force base in Tucson, Arizona, which captured video footage of her pouring bleach into a container and then emptying it into Roby Johnson’s coffee maker, according to authorities.

Roby Johnson subsequently filed a complaint with police, telling investigators that he believed his wife was trying to kill him to collect insurance benefits stemming from his death, according to CNN affiliate KVOA.

Police arrested Feliciano Johnson on 18 July. The arrest drew national headlines once the poisoning method and secretly set-up cameras emerged in police filings.

She had been unable to post a $250,000 bail before pleading out and accepting her sentence.

Despite the attention that Feliciano Johnson’s case generated, women in the US are more likely to endure severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner. One in four women do so, while the rate for men is one in nine, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

PhillipTopicall on May 11st, 2024 at 12:38 UTC »

Omg ok, so apparently they are getting a divorce… but are still living together until it’s finalized and the husband didn’t want her to go to jail…SIR!!! SIR! What is wrong with you?

Therapy for you both. Jail for her as dessert.

She’d been doing this in two different countries, in two different hemispheres my man!!! Jfc she wanted you dead for suspected MONEY!!

And you’re allowing your kid around her. No, no, sorry you’re crazy too!

LightKnightAce on May 11st, 2024 at 12:08 UTC »

Is this the same case where the guy found out there was bleach in the coffee maker, and then took it to the police, who said they could do nothing?

And then he filmed it? and they were still very flimsy in arresting her?

IntoTheMystic1 on May 11st, 2024 at 11:48 UTC »

The fuck? Wasn't there video of her pouring bleach in his coffee? How does she just get parole?