Louise Harris, facing a death sentence for the murder-for-hire slaying...

Louise Harris, facing a death sentence for the murder-for-hire slaying of her husband must get a new sentencing hearing.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Harris' legal counsel was ineffective during the sentencing phase of her 1989 trial and she should get a new sentencing hearing before a new jury. She was convicted of getting her lover to line up a hit man to kill her husband, Isaiah Harris,  as he was driving to work in 1988.
The jury in her 1989 trial recommended by a 7-5 vote that she be sentenced to life in prison without parole, but the judge overruled the jury and sentenced her to death.
On appeal, she argued that her attorney did not do a good job of presenting reasons for not imposing a death sentence, including not soliciting testimony from a jailer who could have described bruises on Harris' legs that could have indicated she was abused. The appeals court agreed in a split decision.
The hit man, Michael Anthony Sockwell, received a death sentence. Harris' boyfriend, Lorenzo McCarter, and another accomplice, Alex Jerome Hood, who drove the car for the hit man, were sentenced to life in prison without parole.