SAN DIEGO — Hearings on alleged juror misconduct have delayed sentencing for Cynthia Sommer, a 34-year-mother of four who was found guilty last January of poisoning her Marine husband with arsenic in order to collect his veteran's benefits.

A witness testified Wednesday that several jurors discussed the case before deliberations and that one juror, a former police officer, sought out and considered improper information during deliberations, which influenced his interactions with the panel.

"I saw a clear bias and it seemed self-serving," alternate juror Lorie Cosio-Azar testified. "I was very upset."

Defense attorney Allan Bloom is appealing the guilty verdict, claiming that, in addition to juror misconduct, Sommer's former attorney failed to object to speculative science and inadmissible "lifestyle evidence" that assassinated the defendant's character, making it impossible for her to receive a fair trial.

"Ms. Sommer faces a lifetime in prison, having had little more than a shell of a defense as it relates to some of the most critical evidence against her," Bloom stated in a 50-page motion for a new trial.

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Witness testimony will continue Monday before Judge Peter Deddeh, who will decide at the conclusion of the hearings whether to sentence Sommer to life in prison without parole or grant a new trial.

The 2002 sudden death of Todd Sommer, a healthy 23-year-old Marine, was initially ruled the result of cardiac arrhythmia. But more than a year later, Army scientists found elevated levels of arsenic in his tissue samples. Cynthia Sommer was arrested for murder in November 2005.

With no evidence linking Sommer to the poison, the prosecution's case revolved around her seeming inability to live within her means, the $250,000 insurance and monthly veteran's benefits she collected, and the breast-implant surgery she had two months after Todd's death.

During the trial, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn called Sommer's former friends and lovers to the stand to describe her sexual encounters with four different men and a trip to Tijuana with girlfriends, where she flashed her new breasts to strangers in a wet T-shirt contest.

"It had a powerful and shocking impact, but added nothing to a claim that Cindy killed Todd. It cast Cindy with a 'Scarlet Letter' as a wanton woman," the defense argued in its appeal.

Sommer's conviction Jan. 30 sparked nationwide interest and debate about whether the widow was guilty of a greed-driven murder or victim of an inappropriate libido.

One person who strongly disagreed with the verdict was alternate juror Cosio-Azar, who contacted the defense after a parking-lot conversation with Juror No. 10, a retired detective sergeant with the San Diego Police Department.

Juror No. 10 allegedly revealed to Cosio-Azar that he knew Sommer fought extradition from Florida to California, which proved her guilt in his mind because "if she wanted to tell the world she was innocent, she would have come back willingly."

Bloom told reporters Wednesday that Sommer was acting on the bad advice of a Florida attorney who believed the case against her was so weak that charges would be dropped. The information, however, was not presented at trial.

Cosio-Azar testified that Juror No. 10 also claimed to have used his career expertise to "connect the dots and fill in the holes" for the other jurors, because he didn't want to see another criminal get away with murder.

Cosio-Azar, who was not part of deliberations, said she was so distraught that she discussed it with her husband and co-workers and made a note of the conversation in her jury notebook.

Her husband and co-workers also testified Wednesday, confirming her recollections.

However, alternate juror No. 2 testified that he was present during the parking-lot conversation and extradition did not come up.

"She and I remembered it very differently," he said.

Two other jurors testified Wednesday that Juror No. 10 did not take a leadership role in the deliberations, nor did he discuss her extradition fight until two weeks later when he brought it up in a group e-mail to the panel, only expressing at that time that it helped to confirm her guilt in his mind.

Gunn is expected to call Juror No. 10 to the stand Monday to refute the accusations.

Prosecutors admitted at trial that they uncovered no evidence linking Sommer to arsenic, but suggested she could have retrieved a lethal amount from just two and a half packages of ant killer.

Bloom claims this was one example of the shoddy science Sommer's defense failed to object to, noting in the appeal that it would have taken three pounds of ant killer ingested in a matter of minutes for the prosecution's theory to match the level of arsenic found in Todd's tissues.

"The thought of Cindy buying 150 ant stakes, opening each of them, scraping the poison out, molding it into a great big 'cookie of bait' and feeding Todd a three pound giant candy bar of Bait Gel and saying 'here honey, I've got your evening snack, be sure to munch it all down' is utterly and totally ridiculous," the motion states.

Sommer sat quietly by her attorney's side Wednesday. Bloom told reporters she was nervous, but was bolstered by prison visits from family, and her daughter, who just turned 16. Supporters in the audience wore blue ribbons on their lapels, Sommer's favorite color.

Todd Sommer's father sat somberly on the opposite side of the aisle, with a Marine pin and a tiny gold angel affixed to his own lapel.