NEW ORLEANS – Jury selection has begun for the trial of a thrice-widowed woman charged in her second husband's 2006 death in New Orleans — a case linked to her third husband's later, mysterious death in Mississippi.
Emma Raine faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Ernest Smith. Her third husband, James Raine, also was implicated in Smith's death. Prosecutors called it a plot to benefit from life insurance proceeds.
James Raine was killed in 2011 in Pearl River County, Mississippi. Pearl River Sheriff David Allison said Emma Raine is a suspect in that death as well.
The trigger-man in Smith's death, Alfred Everette, was convicted in 2014. Prosecutors at Everette's trial said Emma Raine's first husband died under mysterious circumstances in 1994.
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