Niccolò Caranti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

David Xu, an engineer working in the San Francisco Bay Area, was sentenced to two years of probation after being caught on tape poisoning a coworker's water, according to The Berkeley Scanner.

He was arrested and charged in 2019, and after a years-long legal process, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who is backed by George Soros, signed off on a plea deal.

The deal included one day in jail, adding to the 10 days Xu served following his initial arrest, according to The New York Post.

“That seems a pretty strong case for two counts of poisoning and an attempted murder prosecution,” wrote law professor Jonathan Turley, who specializes in criminal law. “Yet, the prosecutors dropped the attempted murder charge and accepted a plea on the two poisoning counts.”

“I have been a criminal defense attorney for my entire career, but there is a case out of Berkeley, California that is a real head scratcher. David Xu was the chief metallurgist for a company called Berkeley Engineering and Research (BEAR) and was caught on tape trying to poison a colleague. His actions are blamed for not only causing harm to Rong Yuan, but her parents. After spending only 10 days in jail, Alameda County prosecutors and a judge signed off on a probation deal in the case,” Turley added.

“Xu was arrested back in 2019 after Yuan became suspicious that her illness (which she thought might be cancer) might be related to a water bottle that she used at work. When her parents used the bottle to cook, they also became ill. She set up a spy camera at work and caught David Xu tampering with the water bottle. It was tested and found to contain “extraordinarily high levels of cadmium, a poisonous heavy metal,” Turley continued.

Under the plea deal, Xu's attempted murder charge was dismissed, alongside most of his poisoning charges, and he pleaded no contest to one charge of “poisoning with enhancement” and pleaded certified convicted no contest to another charge of the same crime.

Turley expressed concern over the leniency of the sentence, stating, “This man hurt three people and could have killed a colleague. It is not clear what it takes to get actual jail time in Alameda County under Price.”