KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Jury selection is underway in the third trial of a woman accused of killing her husband and staging his death to look like a suicide.
Potential jurors reported Monday in the trial of 68-year-old Raynella Dossett Leath. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports (http://bit.ly/2p0drQT) she is charged in the 2003 shooting death of David Leath.
She was indicted in 2006, and a mistrial was declared in 2009 after the jury deadlocked. She was convicted in a 2010 retrial and sentenced to between 51 years and life in prison. She won a new trial last year after an investigation found that Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner used drugs during her trial.
In 2008, Leath was indicted by a grand jury on charges of killing her first husband, prosecutor Ed Dossett, 16 years after his body was found trampled by cattle in 1992. Charges in that case were later dropped.
Special Judge Paul Summers denied Leath's attorneys' request to move the case outside Knox County to avoid a prejudiced jury. Summers called a larger jury pool than usual to see if a jury could be seated from within the county.