Nicole Diar

Nicole Diar (born July 21, 1975) is an American woman convicted of the 2003 murder of her 4-year-old son, Jacob. She was sentenced to death. Her death sentence was overturned in 2008. The supreme court upheld her conviction but overturned the sentence on the basis that the jury wasn't informed that a single vote could prevent her from receiving the death penalty. On June 3, 2010, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors argued that on August 27, 2003, Diar suffocated her son and before setting the house on fire, though the exact cause of Jacob's death was never determined because his body was too badly burned.

Diar herself was a burn victim. At age four, she suffered severe burns over more than 20 percent of her body when her brother accidentally set fire to her nightgown. Diar had worked at summer camps for burn victims to help other children who were suffering from the stigma of having burn scars on their bodies.