In one of the most bizarre sentencing decisions in recent memory, visiting Judge Anthony Viviano sentenced Brian Kozlowski, 46, to just 60 days for a crime warranting 180 months. Kozlowski’s ex-wife suspected he was poisoning her and caught him on camera spiking her coffee. She was lucky but nearly not as lucky as he was in getting this ridiculously low sentence for a 12-year felony. Vivano said that he gave him the low sentence because Kozlowski showed some remorse.
Kozlowski was in the middle of a divorce and started to slip diphenhydramine, the primary ingredient in antihistamines, into Therese Kozlowski’s coffee. She started to have blurred vision and felt nauseous. She suspected the coffee and set up a hidden camera. It caught Kozlowski in the act. He was shown on tape dissolving the diphenhydramine pills in a shot glass and then stirring the drug into the coffee pot.
Therese Kozlowski, makes $180,000 annually and killing her would have allowed her now ex-husband to collect $1 million in life insurance, retirement and savings accounts.
His wife claimed that Kozlowski slipped her Adderall, laxative, and then poison. The couple’s adult daughter also drank the tainted coffee and both claimed that they almost crashed driving home due to the sleeping aid.
Kozlowski pleaded no contest to a felony count of placing harmful objects in food. The minimum sentence for that offense is 19-39 months.
Nevertheless, this premeditated and prolonged effort to kill his wife resulted in a 60 day sentence because Vivano said that he detected “a sense of remorse” and said that “he does have an understanding of the seriousness of this matter.”