11 December 2017 :

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mac Fisher sentenced Lorraine Hunter, 62, Black, to death. Judge Fisher upheld a jury’s recommendation. A Riverside jury in August convicted Hunter of murdering her 56-year-old husband Albert Thomas on Nov. 3, 2009 to collect more than $1 million in life insurance proceeds, and on SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 (see) recommended that she receive capital punishment. The prosecution's key witness was Hunter's now-23-year-old daughter, Briuana Lashanae Hunter, who confessed to plotting with her mother to kill Thomas. Briuana Hunter, 15 at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty last year to 3 counts of attempted murder and 1 count of voluntary manslaughter. She's slated to be sentenced on Dec. 13 to 18 years, 9 months in state prison. The prosecutor argued to jurors that Lorraine Hunter had masterminded, and probably carried out, the slaying of her previous husband, Allen Brown, who was gunned down in what appeared to be a random act of violence in Inglewood in 1996. The circumstances were eerily similar to Thomas' death, with Brown shot in the back. No charges were ever filed in the case, which remains officially unsolved.