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Ryan Widmer called 911 on the night of Aug. 11, 2008, to report that his wife had fallen asleep in the bathtub of their home in Hamilton Township, Ohio, and drowned. Warren County prosecutors did not believe him, and it took three trials over more than two years to convict him of her murder.

Sarah Widmer, 24, was found unresponsive in the tub of the couple's home. The two had married only four months earlier, in April 2008. On the recording of the emergency call, Widmer, then 27, is heard telling the dispatcher his wife would not wake up and pleading with her to come back.

Investigators questioned the account almost from the start. Ron Kronenberger, the dispatcher who took the call, later testified that parts of it struck him as unusual. Prosecutors argued the scene did not fit a drowning during a bath, pointing to how little water was found, while the defense maintained Sarah Widmer had lost consciousness on her own and that her husband had done nothing to harm her.

A jury convicted Widmer of murder in 2009, but Judge Neal Bronson of Warren County Common Pleas Court threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial. He ruled that jurors had violated Widmer's rights by running their own experiments at home to time how long a wet body takes to dry, then sharing the results during deliberations.

The second trial, in May 2010, ended with a hung jury. A third trial opened in early 2011, and on Feb. 15 the jury deliberated about 12 hours over two days before again finding Widmer guilty of murder.

Bronson sentenced him to 15 years to life in prison, the mandatory term for murder under Ohio law. Widmer has maintained that he is innocent.