KNOXVILLE - A Knox County Criminal Court jury today convicted Raynella Dossett Leath of premeditated first-degree murder.

Dossett Leath, 61, was convicted of shooting her husband, David Leath, in the head with a revolver.

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

She initially reported the death as a suicide.

About an hour before returning the verdict, the jury reviewed for the second time a detailed police video of the crime scene.

The jury's request to review the tape came at 1 p.m. in the second day of deliberations. The jury deliberated for six hours on Sunday, and returned to consider the case at 8:40 a.m. today. The jurors only took about a 30-minute lunch break today.

Dossett Leath's first trial ended last year with a jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction.

The Leath case was circumstantial.

It is undisputed that three shots were fired from the Colt .38-caliber revolver found by David Leath's body. Based on the comparison of different brands of spent cartridges in the gun with the bullet taken from the victim's head, the final shot was not the fatal shot, a forensics expert testified.

According to medical testimony, Leath was heavily impaired by drugs, died instantly when his brain stem was severed and could not have fired the double action revolver even with an involuntary muscle movement.

The state contends that Dossett Leath missed on the first shot, hit with a second shot, then placed the gun in his hand for a third shot to get gunshot residue on the hand.

After finding her husband's body in their bedroom, Dossett Leath called 911 and reported it as a suicide.

In the previous trial, the defense spent considerable effort on presenting evidence that the death could have been suicide. That tactic was all but abandoned in the second trial, and in his closing argument, defense attorneys James A.H. Bell described the death as a "homicide" and Paula Ham described it as a "crime."

But Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire said that does not matter, because regardless of how Leath died, Dossett Leath was not there.

During the trial, not every moment of her whereabouts were accounted for during the time frame in which her husband died, but several alibi witnesses placed her away from the scene for most of that time.

More details as they develop online and in Tuesday's News Sentinel.