Ok, I admit it I was wrong on this. I thought they might acquit her.
Will she serve jail time or receive probation? She is going to the jury on this, on one hand they may decide she's been hurt enough and put her on probation however, if they found her guilty, which they did, of conspiring with her husband, Ted Roberts, to blackmail her lovers, she will receive pen time.
At this point, jail time seems likely, unless the defense can play a heavy sympathy card for someone the jury probably does not have much sympathy for. Especially since they convicted her on all five counts of theft when her husband was only convicted on three of the counts.
Roberts convicted on 5 counts
Guillermo Contreras: Express-News
Bexar County jurors late Monday convicted a San Antonio lawyer on felony charges that she helped her husband blackmail four of her former lovers.
Mary S. Roberts was found guilty on all five theft counts she faced. The verdict was harsher than the one handed her husband, Ted H. Roberts, who was convicted earlier this year on three counts in the scheme.
The couple was accused of a shakedown that extracted $155,000 in hush-money payments from the married men. Mary Roberts had extramarital affairs with them over a two-month period in the fall of 2001.
Soon after, Ted Roberts threatened each of the men that he would expose their infidelities in court unless they agreed to pay him. In doing so, he employed an unusual legal procedure, called a "202 petition," that lent his threats an air of legal authority.
The petitions can be used to gather information for legal discovery. But jurors in trials of both the Robertses didn't buy the claim that the petitions were drafted for a valid investigation. Prosecutors said they were nothing more than cover to extort money from the paramours.
Mary Roberts kept her composure as the verdicts for each count were read and as a bailiff fingerprinted her minutes later. She faces anywhere from two years of probation to up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 4 by 226th District Judge Sid Harle.
