DURHAM — Former Assistant District Attorney Freda Black is due in court Dec. 10 to answer to the charge that she was driving while impaired.

She was charged Wednesday and released on an unsecured bond.

Black, 51, was a primary figure in the 2003 prosecution of Durham novelist Michael Peterson.

Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen, but last December he was granted a new trial after Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson ruled that a key witness gave misleading testimony. He is currently free on bond. A date for a new trial is pending the outcome of the state’s appeal of Hudson’s decision.

Hudson also previously ruled that Black, along with former DA Tracey Cline, improperly withheld evidence favorable to another murder suspect, Derrick Allen, who had been convicted of killing a 2-year-old girl. The court of appeals last month reversed Hudson’s ruling and sent the case back to the trial court.

Black ran unsuccessfully for District Attorney in 2006 and 2008 and for a District Court judgeship in 2010.