Forsyth County woman's case before state supreme court

ATLANTA - An attorney for Lynn Turner of Cumming, the woman convicted of murder in the antifreeze poisoning of her police officer husband has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.

Atlanta attorney Don Samuel argued yesterday that a Cobb County judge was wrong to let the jury hear details about the death six years later of her boyfriend; he, too, died from antifreeze poisoning.

A decision by the high court to throw out the 2004 conviction could jeopardize the state's pending death penalty case against Turner in the other death.

Samuel said Cobb Superior Court Judge James Bodiford should not have allowed the ``similar transaction evidence'' of her boyfriend's death in trying Turner for her husband's death. He argued the reasons stated for doing so did NOT establish what he called -- ``a logical connection'' between the two deaths.

A jury found Turner a former nine-one-one operator guilty of murder in the 1995 murder of her husband Cobb County Police Officer Glenn Turner. She was sentenced to life in prison. The case was moved out of Cobb County to Houston County in middle Georgia because of pretrial publicity.

Since her conviction, authorities have charged Turner with murder in the 2001 death of Randy Thompson, a Forsyth County firefighter and the father of her two children. That trial is due to begin January eighth in Forsyth County. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the 38-year-old woman from Cumming.

Both men were in their 30s when they died, and both deaths were at first ruled as natural, due to heart problems.

A court spokesman says a decision on Turner's appeal is expected in the next several months.