Raynella Dossett-Leath is on trial in an upscale area of rural Tennessee, but it’s far from high-profile, even on CNN (try to find a video clip). As a mystery writer, I find this trial particularly intriguing. It has all the characteristics of a classic murder mystery and potentially of a classic courtroom drama, too. The defendant is an attractive, older widow and professional nurse. Her attorney is a passionate, folksy Southern gentleman. The defendant’s step-daughter to me appears to be out for revenge (which is understandable if her father was murdered), and possibly for more (a multi-million-dollar estate). And the jury isn’t supposed to know it but the defendant is under indictment for killing her first husband, too, and also has an arrest record for attempted murder with a firearm.

But the jury isn’t supposed to surf the web, and unfortunately (as we all know) many jurors do.

The defense opening statement hinted at plenty of reasonable doubt and at least two alternative theories of the crime: suicide and murder for hire. If I were a mystery writer I could weave a classic mystery from this material. Oh, that’s right! I am.

(Older women make fascinating mystery characters. They turn stereotypes upside down. Some people find them inherently sympathetic, others despise them. In my forthcoming novel, The Juror Investigates: Verdict, Déjà Vu [Light Pages, LLC] a “well-preserved” Cuban grandmother is accused of murdering her husband by puncturing his skull with an unknown blunt instrument. The juror who hangs the jury in the woman’s trial is forced to pursue the truth after the judge declares a mistrial. She is “Miss T. Iris Ginge,” who is featured in “The Odds of Death” [see The Evil That Men Do])

Speaking of stereotypes, defense attorneys have a particularly difficult task in adjusting their rhetoric to accommodate a defendant like Nurse Dossett-Leath. Nurses haven’t always fared well in the public imagination (think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). And jurors don’t expect to see a well-groomed, gray-haired, attractive woman sitting in the defendant’s chair.