Ann Miller Kontz will spend the days until her trial in January 2006 at Women's Prison in Raleigh, preparing a defense against allegations that she killed her first husband with arsenic.

Wake Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens refused a request Tuesday by Kontz's lawyers to reduce her $3 million bail. But he agreed to sign an order moving Kontz, 34, to the prison on South State Street in Southeast Raleigh from the downtown Wake County jail.

"I guess it's better than nothing, but we wanted her to come home," said one of Kontz's defense lawyers, Wade Smith of Raleigh. "It would be better at Women's Prison because she can see the sunshine."

Stephens said he would reconsider the bail amount only if Kontz's trial, scheduled to begin Jan. 16, is delayed.

Kontz is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Eric Miller, 30, a postdoctoral fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill. Police say Eric Miller died of cardiac arrest Dec. 2, 2000, after being poisoned.

Smith and Raleigh lawyer Joseph B. Cheshire V are concerned that incarceration will so diminish Kontz mentally and physically that she will not be as able to help them prepare a defense. They hope relocation to Women's Prison will let her visit more with her family and also let her securely review more than 10,000 pages of evidence against her.

At the county jail, Cheshire said, he cannot leave evidence with Kontz for fear that other inmates will read it and try to become prosecution witnesses. The prison would offer an office to keep the documents secure and give Kontz, a former scientific researcher, access to them. The documents include a lot of scientific evidence.

For Kontz, her lawyers' vision of her prison life won't be reality right away.

At first, she will be locked in a single cell for 23 hours a day. Her meals will be brought to her, and she will be allowed out only for an hour to shower, said Keith Acree, a Department of Correction spokesman.

Eventually, Kontz might be assigned to dormitory-style housing and be allowed to walk outside to the dining hall for meals, Acree said. Every seven days, she will be permitted contact visitation with family, possibly including her daughter from her marriage with Miller, he said.

Making Kontz's case

In court Tuesday, Smith argued that Kontz was "remarkably well-qualified" to be let out on bail. She has no criminal history. She was employed at the time of her arrest. She surrendered to police when she was charged. She doesn't have an alcohol or drug problem. She has her family and husband, Paul Kontz, to support her.

Smith asked for a $300,000 bail and volunteered Kontz to be under house arrest in her home in Wilmington.

Stephens wasn't swayed.

"The original decision was not made lightly," Stephens said of the bail he set in December. "I was comfortable when I made that decision. I'm still comfortable with that decision."

Kontz's bail is thought to be the highest for a murder defendant in Wake County history.

Bail amounts vary widely for murder defendants who, like Kontz, aren't facing the death penalty. Although state law entitles such defendants to bail, few ask for it because often it is unlikely they or their family can come up with the property or cash to secure a bail bond.

In comparison, Durham novelist Mike Peterson was ultimately granted an $850,000 bail. He made bail and was released pending trial on a charge of murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson, in December 2001.

In Raleigh, Louis McLean is accused of being the mastermind behind the Nov. 1, 2002, payday robbery at a Raleigh public utilities building off Lake Woodard Drive that resulted in the death of Robert Saiz.

McLean has a prior voluntary manslaughter conviction for a shooting at the State Fairgrounds. His criminal record goes on for 30-plus pages and includes numerous felonies. In December, prosecutors changed their minds and decided not to seek the death penalty against McLean. Judge Stephens set McLean's bail at $1 million.