Wife in alleged hit-man plot faces trial

Opening arguments are expected this morning in the trial of a Garden City woman accused of asking an acquaintance to help her find a hit man to kill her husband.

Jury selection was completed Wednesday in the case of Susan Williams, 43, a mother of four children, whom prosecutors say tried to hire a hit man last February to kill her husband, Peter, 46. They were involved in a bitter divorce.

The hit man Williams is accused of trying to hire turned out to be an undercover police officer, prosecutors say.

Williams - wearing a charcoal gray pantsuit and her hair pinned up in a braid - sat quietly in court next to her attorney, John Carman of Garden City, as he and the prosecutor selected the jury.

Prosecutors have said that not long before Williams tried to hire a hit man, her husband had learned about an affair she had with his brother almost 20 years earlier and filed for divorce.

During jury selection, Carman and prosecutor Jane Zwirn-Turkin questioned members of the jury pool about their personal backgrounds - asking about their marital status and whether they or their parents had ever been divorced.

Zwirn-Turkin asked those who had been divorced to use a scale of one to 10 to rate whether the dissolution of their marriages had been friendly or messy. She told one juror she wanted to determine "whether it would affect your ability to be a fair and partial juror."

Williams faces charges of second-degree criminal solicitation and second-degree conspiracy. If convicted, she could face a maximum of 81/3 to 25 years in prison.