Stella Nickell was convicted in 1988 of tampering with consumer products in a case that began with two deaths in Auburn, Washington, five days apart in June 1986. The first was her own husband. The second was a woman she had never met, who had bought the product in an ordinary store. A federal jury found her guilty on all five counts of tampering with a consumer product under a law Congress had passed only three years earlier, and she became the first person convicted under it. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction in August 1989. She maintained her innocence for decades, and a later effort to reopen the case failed.
The case drew national attention from the start. The deaths set off a major criminal investigation and a nationwide recall, and her trial in federal court was, in the words of the appeals court, a highly publicized one. The prosecution's theory was that the tampering was meant to make her husband's death look accidental, so that an insurance policy would pay out more.
Stella Maudine Nickell met Bruce Nickell in 1974, and the two married about two years later. They made their life in Auburn, Washington. Before the case that made her name, she had served four months in jail for check fraud.
Her husband's life insurance carried an accidental-death provision that paid an additional $100,000 if his death was ruled accidental, a provision that included death by this kind of tampering. That clause became the center of the government's case.
The first death came in June 1986. Doctors attributed it to natural causes, and for several days nothing tied it to anything else.
Five days later Susan Snow, another Auburn resident, died. She was unknown to the Nickells and had bought the product in a store, and her death was traced to deliberate tampering. The manufacturer recalled the product across the country, and a major criminal investigation began.
It was the widow who connected the two cases. She told the authorities that her husband had taken the same product from the same lot as the one linked to the second death. With that, his death was reexamined, and the authorities concluded that he too had died because of the tampering. Two people from the same city were now dead.
Police and the FBI worked the case together. In its early stage the police looked closely at someone else, who was cleared. The FBI's files on the case eventually ran to roughly a thousand pages, among them a memorandum on other possible suspects.
The widow's own account drew investigators toward her. Her description of how the product had come into the household struck them as unusual, and the insurance on her husband's life gave the government a possible motive: a death that looked like the random work of a tamperer would be treated as accidental, and the accidental-death benefit would apply. A natural death would not have triggered it.
She agreed to a polygraph examination. Its results were never put before the jury, and her lawyer later said he had never seen them despite asking.
Roughly a year and a half after her husband's death, the investigation produced an indictment.
In December 1987 a federal grand jury indicted her on charges that she had caused the deaths of her husband and the second victim by tampering with a consumer product. It was the first indictment of its kind under the federal statute. Prosecutors declined to explain publicly what motive they would allege. They asked the court for approval to hold her in custody before trial, and the memorandum supporting that request was sealed. If convicted of tampering resulting in death, she faced a possible sentence of life in prison.
The indictment charged five counts of tampering with a consumer product in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1365. The tampering, as the appeals court later summarized the charges, resulted in the deaths of two victims: the defendant's husband, and another woman, unknown to the defendant, who had bought the product in a store.
The case was tried in 1988 before a jury in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The government built its case around motive and around the evidence of a relative, who testified that she had talked for years about killing her husband. The defense attacked that witness's credibility, but the jury believed the testimony.
Deliberations were long and difficult. After three days the jury reported itself deadlocked on a Friday afternoon. The trial judge gave an Allen-type instruction, a supplemental charge to a deadlocked jury, and then sent the jury home for the weekend. On Monday the judge had excerpts of testimony reread to the jurors, both direct and cross-examination, and reminded them of their duties. In the instructions the judge acknowledged how physically and mentally tiring their work had been over the previous three weeks.
After about a week of deliberation, a juror told the court that she had received a telephone call from someone who asked, "don't you know that she failed the lie detector test?" The defense lawyers discussed with their client what to do and decided not to ask that the juror be removed. The jury went on deliberating, and on Monday, May 9, 1988, it returned a verdict of guilty on all five counts. She was 44.
She was sentenced to 90 years in federal prison.
After the verdict, the press revealed something about the same juror that had not come out during jury selection. Before the trial she had brought a lawsuit against a manufacturer over a product she believed had been contaminated. Asked during jury selection whether she had ever been the victim of a product tampering incident, she had answered no.
The defense moved for a new trial, arguing that the answer had been misleading and had deprived the defendant of a fair jury. At the hearing on that motion the parties stipulated that this juror had been the only member of the panel who had voted at any point to acquit. The trial judge regarded that fact as persuasive evidence that she had not been biased against the defendant, and denied the motion.
The Ninth Circuit heard argument on June 8, 1989, and decided the appeal, United States v. Stella Maudine Nickell, No. 88-3132, on August 29, 1989. The Federal Public Defender's office argued the appeal for her and an assistant United States attorney for the government. A three-judge panel affirmed the conviction on every ground raised.
On the telephone call, the court held that the defense had made a knowing and intelligent waiver of any challenge to the juror's qualifications, because counsel had discussed the alternatives with the defendant and chosen to keep the juror.
On jury selection, the court applied the Supreme Court's test in McDonough Power Equipment, Inc. v. Greenwood, under which a party seeking a new trial must first show that a juror failed to answer honestly a material question. The juror had drawn a distinction between contamination and deliberate tampering, the court reasoned, and her answer was not dishonest. There was therefore no basis for a new trial.
On the rule that bars inquiry into jurors' deliberations, the court found that any error in the trial judge's questioning was harmless, and that the defense had waived any objection to the judge's reliance on the holdout-juror stipulation by entering into it.
On the instructions, the defense argued that the court had in effect given two Allen-type charges, which Ninth Circuit precedent treats as coercive when a second follows a second deadlock. The panel acknowledged that even a single such charge stands near the edge of impermissible coercion, but held that the Monday remarks were a reminder rather than a second charge and did not cross the line.
On the rereading of testimony, the court held that the decision was within the trial judge's discretion, that the excerpts included both direct and cross-examination, and that the defense had pointed to nothing misleading in them. The conviction stood.
She continued to insist on her innocence. "I am not guilty," she said in 2001. "And I won't quit fighting until I prove it."
That year two private investigators, working without pay, took up her case and argued that there was no credible evidence against her. Her legal team filed a request for a new trial built on their findings. It pointed to material it said the jury had never heard: the federal files had included a memorandum on other possible suspects that was not given to the defense, rewards had been paid to prosecution witnesses, and the results of her polygraph examination had never been disclosed to her lawyer, who called the test a ruse meant to draw a confession. It was the third attempt to reopen the case, and the request was denied. Police and federal investigators continued to maintain that she was guilty.
In May 2022, at 78 and after more than 30 years in custody, she wrote by hand to the federal court in Seattle asking for compassionate release, citing her age, her health and the care she received in prison. The letter, as reported, contained the first admission of guilt that her former public defender knew of. A federal judge denied the request in the weeks that followed.
The law under which she was tried was new. Congress enacted the Federal Anti-Tampering Act on October 13, 1983, adding Section 1365 to Title 18 of the United States Code under the heading "Tampering with consumer products." The statute reaches anyone who tampers with a consumer product that affects interstate or foreign commerce with reckless disregard for the risk that another person will be placed in danger of death or bodily injury. Where the death of an individual results, it authorizes imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
The deaths occurred in a single Washington city, yet the charges were federal ones, brought before a federal grand jury and tried in federal court. Her indictment in December 1987 was the first of its kind under the law, and her conviction in 1988 made her the first person convicted under the federal tampering statutes.
For most of her imprisonment she denied the killings; in 2001 she said she was not guilty and would keep fighting to prove it. Her 2022 letter to the court, as reported, was the first time her former public defender knew of her admitting guilt.
The 2001 challenge raised several points that no court accepted as grounds for a new trial: that a memorandum on other possible suspects was withheld from the defense, that rewards paid to prosecution witnesses were not before the jury, and that the polygraph results were never disclosed. The court denied the request, and investigators stood by the conviction.
The motive presented at trial, the accidental-death benefit on her husband's insurance, was the government's theory, and the jury accepted the case built on it. The appeals court did not revisit the evidence; it addressed only the conduct of jury selection, deliberations and instructions.
1974: Stella Nickell meets her future husband.
About 1976: The couple marry; they later live in Auburn, Washington.
June 1986: Her husband dies in Auburn; the death is first attributed to natural causes.
June 1986, five days later: A second Auburn resident, a woman unknown to the Nickells, dies; the death is traced to tampering, and a nationwide recall and a major criminal investigation follow.
1986: After the widow tells investigators her husband used the same product, his death is linked to the tampering.
December 1987: A federal grand jury indicts her on five counts of tampering with a consumer product under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1365, the first such indictment.
1988: Trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington; after a deadlock, an Allen-type instruction and a juror's report of an anonymous call, the jury convicts on all five counts.
May 9, 1988: The jury convicts her on all five counts.
1988: She is sentenced to 90 years in federal prison; a motion for a new trial over a juror's jury-selection answer is denied.
June 8, 1989: Appeal argued in the Ninth Circuit.
August 29, 1989: The Ninth Circuit affirms the conviction.
2001: A request for a new trial, the third attempt to reopen the case, is filed and denied.
May 2022: She asks the federal court in Seattle for compassionate release; a federal judge denies the request.