Jessica Williams could have faced 120 years in prison for running over six teens on a Las Vegas highway, killing them. Instead, she was sentenced to 18 to 48 years after a jury found her guilty only of driving with drugs in her system and not a more serious charge.

"God loves me," she told her lawyer after the verdict last February.

The jury chose not to find the admitted marijuana smoker guilty of driving under the influence, but instead convicted her under a controversial statute the defense was confident would be overturned on appeal.

More than two years later, a judge ordered Williams, now 23, a new trial because of the very statute her lawyer touted as unconstitutional.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Williams' appeal aimed at striking down the law, Nevada District Court Judge Michael Douglas threw out the verdict Tuesday. The statute automatically labels a driver legally impaired if she has a minimum amount of various drugs in her bloodstream. Williams was the first person convicted under the 1999 legislation.

Douglas agreed with the defense that the law says nothing specific regarding the amount of metabolite produced by marijuana found in the bloodstream.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence about the amount of metabolite found in Williams' blood.

The law generated controversy from medical and legal experts, who said the threshold is very low. Williams' lawyer, John Watkins, contended that those who use marijuana on a daily basis, as his client admitted to having done, would need to be more than an occasional user to become impaired.

At the time of the verdict, prosecutors said they were not concerned about a possible appeal, citing other states that have upheld similar laws. But Watkins noted that other states, such as Georgia, have overturned similar laws on constitutional grounds.

During the trial, Watkins argued that neither marijuana nor Ecstasy played a role in the March 19, 2000, crash. Medical experts testified for the defense that the amount of drugs in her bloodstream wasn't enough to make Williams impaired. The defense also called medical personnel who treated Williams following the crash to testify that she showed no signs of impairment.

The defense claimed Williams fell asleep and even called a sleep expert to the stand who said she has a sleeping disorder. The teens were cleaning up trash along the highway as part of a court-ordered community service program.

Williams, a former stripper, was sentenced by Clark County Judge Mark Gibbons to six consecutive terms of three to eight years, one term for each victim. Gibbons had discretion to sentence her to as little as two years or as much as 120 years in prison, and decide whether the terms would run concurrently or consecutively.