A woman accused of killing her husband by setting him on fire and then running him over has been found guilty by a jury in a retrial.
Linda Stermer has been found guilty of two counts of murder, including first-degree murder. The Paw Paw jury deliberated for less than 7 hours before turning in the verdict Friday.
Stermer now faces mandatory life in prison without parole.
Her husband, Todd Stermer, died in 2007 in the yard of their Lawrence Township home. Prosecu-tors said that Stermer doused her husband with gasoline and set him on fire, not long after he learned she was having an extramarital affair. They alleged that she then hit him with a van as he tried to escape.
She was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to life in prison, but a federal appeals court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. The court ruled that her trial attorney Jeff Getting — now the Kalamazoo County prosecutor — did not consult an expert to rebut testimony that the fire was arson, not an accident.
Stermer has maintained her innocence, claiming her husband had an oil lamp and candles burn-ing in the house and she accidentally hit him with the van while trying to leave for help.
Her new defense team claims faulty fire science led to a wrongful murder conviction in 2010. The team argued her husband set a house fire himself to get the insurance money and killed himself accidentally.
