ROANOKE, Va. — A woman who claimed prescription antidepressants made her homicidal was convicted Monday of stomping her mother to death in a bathroom scuffle in the middle of the night.
Cindy Gail Countess, 49, was escorted sobbing from court after Judge Clifford R. Weckstein found her guilty in a non-jury trial of second-degree murder. She could get five to 40 years in prison at sentencing Nov. 24.
Countess did not deny she killed 82-year-old Edna Dooley. But her lawyers argued that her judgment and self-control were affected by the antidepressant Paxil and that she was not criminally responsible for her mother's death.