Knoxville, TN: Wife Convicted of Killing Husband in Knoxville

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 25, 2010
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Knox County jury on Monday convicted a woman of first-degree murder in the shooting death of her second husband.

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Tennessee Woman Accused in Trail of Death (January 24, 2010)

The sequestered jury returned the verdict against the woman, Raynella Dossett Leath, 61, after about nine hours of deliberations over two days.

Ms. Dossett Leath, a retired nurse, was tried for a second time after a jury deadlocked last year.

She received an automatic life sentence and must serve 51 years before being eligible for parole.

Prosecutors said Ms. Dossett Leath shot her second husband, David Leath, 57, a retired barber, in their bedroom in March 2003. Ms. Dossett Leath claimed her husband killed himself, and her lawyer maintained she was not home when Mr. Leath was shot.

She is also charged with murder in the 1992 death of her first husband, Ed Dossett, a former Knox County prosecutor, and is awaiting trial in that case.

Investigators determined that three shots were fired from the revolver found near Mr. Leath’s body.

According to testimony during the trial, Mr. Leath was heavily impaired by drugs and died instantly when the fatal shot severed his brain stem.

The state contended that Ms. Dossett Leath missed on the first shot, hit with a second one, then placed the gun in his hand for a third shot to get gunshot residue on the hand. No evidence directly linked her to the crime.

In the other case, officials originally concluded Mr. Dossett had been knocked down by his cattle and ruled it an accidental death.

But an investigation into Mr. Leath’s death prompted the authorities to reopen the Dossett case.

A medical examiner testified that toxicology reports completed after Mr. Dossett’s autopsy and burial in 1992 indicated he might have died from an overdose of morphine.