Court overturns conviction of woman accused of trying to convince her son to kill his father with rat poison
An appeals court has overturned a Mount Vernon woman's conviction for soliciting to kill her former husband.
The Washington Court of Appeals on Monday overturned Vanessa Valdiglesias LaValle's conviction. The Seattle Times first reported the decision.
She had been found guilty in 2021 for trying to persuade her son to kill his father with rat poison. Valdiglesias LaValle was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the conviction, which will now be sent back to trial court.
Valdiglesias LaValle in 2020 told her then 10-year-old son that if he put rat poison in her ex-husband's food, the boy's dad would die, and she and the children could live together forever, according to a secretly recorded conversation mentioned in court documents.
The three Court of Appeals Division 1 judges ruled Valdiglesias LaValle's desire to be with her two children forever doesn't equate to a "thing of value" necessary to support a criminal solicitation conviction. In Washington, a person is guilty of criminal solicitation when the person "offers to give or gives money or other thing of value" with intent to promote or facilitate the commission of a crime.
"While it could be argued that a mother's love is priceless, does an expressed desire to be with her children forever equate to a 'thing of value' to support a criminal solicitation conviction …?" the court wrote in a published opinion. "We hold that it does not, because a 'thing of value' must have monetary value."
Valdiglesias LaValle's son testified during her trial in Skagit County Superior Court that his mother never spoke of offering to give him something.
Valdiglesias LaValle's attorney, Suzanne Lee Elliott of the Washington Appellate Project, said she was pleased with the judges' opinion.
"I think they reached the right decision because how one defines 'solicitation' can be either wildly overinclusive or include actions that don't sufficiently indicate an intent or an exchange for the crime," she said, according to the Seattle Times.
The father had suggested that his son secretly record the conversation using a phone hidden under a blanket, court documents said. The documents included excerpts of the recording that show Valdiglesias LaValle talking to her son about putting rat poison in his father's drink.
"He take it and drinking, and he don't know nothing, you know, so nobody's nothing. That's a secret between you and me," Valdiglesias LaValle said to her son, according to court documents.