GUILTY LA - Ernest Smith, 38, dies in contract killing, New Orleans, 15 April 2006

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http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2014/12/05/3383603/widow-of-3-faces-charge-in-2nd.html

A Mississippi hit man who authorities said was hired by a woman whose three husbands have all died under unusual circumstances has been convicted of second-degree murder in her second spouse's shooting. Alfred "Terry" Everette was convicted of killing Ernest Smith, 38, in 2006, at the behest of Smith's wife, 50-year-old Emma Raine.

She has pleaded not guilty in the case and is awaiting trial in March on a second-degree murder charge. Smith, a New Orleans preacher, was the second of Raine's three husbands.

She has been charged only in Smith's death, but a prosecutor made it clear that the other two deaths were suspicious. "Her main source of income was killing husbands," said Assistant District Attorney Laura Rodrigue, who prosecuted the case with her father, District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf..._three_men_who_died_linked_to_same_woman.html

It is one of three successive deaths of men who were close to the same woman, Emma Raine, 50, who has been called a black widow but has not been convicted of any killings...

Prosecutors said Everette, 30, was promised $100,000 to kill Ernest Smith, who was shot dead outside his home on April 15, 2006. Police said the commission came from Raine and her boyfriend at the time, James Raine, who was Everette's foster brother, in exchange for a chunk of an expected $800,000 life insurance payout. Everette's "very close" relationship with his foster brother, combined with the promise of a monetary payout, helped sway him to carry out the hit...

She also is suspected in the deaths of James Raine, who she eventually married but who was found fatally shot in 2011 inside the home they shared, and of her first husband, who was hit by a car, became a paraplegic and deprived of his feeding tube. She has not been charged those deaths.
 
No more about her trial?

Her trial has just started...

The trial is being convened of a thrice-widowed woman charged in her second husband’s 2006 death in New Orleans (...)

Emma Raine, 52, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Ernest Smith. She has pleaded not guilty.


(...)

With prosecutors, the defence team and Raine watching, state District Judge Tracey Flemings-Devallier began questioning potential jurors around midday on Tuesday.

Earlier on Tuesday defence attorney Martin Regan outlined in open court a possible plea deal that was being discussed. But after closed-door meetings in the judge’s chambers the trial proceeded without a deal.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...oes-on-trial-for-second-degree-in-mississippi
 
11:30 a.m.

Opening statements have begun in the complicated case against thrice-widowed Emma Raine. She’s on trial in New Orleans in the 2006 shooting death of her second husband. And, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday she’s under suspicion in the death of her third husband in Pearl River County, Mississippi.

(...)

Assistant District Attorney Laura Rodrigue told jurors evidence shows James Raine and Emma Raine were having an affair in 2006 when they convinced James Raine’s adopted brother to kill her then-husband, Ernest Smith, for a share of insurance money.

Defense attorney Martin Regan told jurors James Raine and his brother plotted the killing without involving Emma Raine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...1c686e-5f1a-11e6-84c1-6d27287896b5_story.html

​(it appears the link will be continuously updated throughout the day as the trial proceeds)
 
Had Emma Raine plotted the contract killing of her second husband, Ernest Smith, in 2006, she surely would have paid the bounty she allegedly had offered, her attorney told an Orleans Parish jury Friday.

But the jury didn't buy that argument or others the defense offered, convicting Raine of second-degree murder.

The unanimous verdict came after nearly three hours of deliberation, ending a trial that began Tuesday.

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_d79ab482-60e0-11e6-a694-5bd74afc56a7.html

Sentencing is set for October 21.
 

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