With one overturned conviction and a mistrial behind her, Dionne Baugh pleaded guilty to bludgeoning her wealthy lover to death in 1996 just as jury selection was set to begin in her third trial on the charges.

"We lost an important state witness to cancer who was primarily responsible for gathering a lot of crucial evidence," Assistant District Attorney Anna Green told Courttv.com. "We spoke with Mr. Herndon's family and decided to end this right here."

Baugh was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 10 more on probation for voluntary manslaughter.

In 2001, an Atlanta jury sentenced her to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Lance Herndon, a successful Georgia entrepreneur with a penchant for juggling a bevy of mistresses, including the Jamaican-born Baugh.

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Investigators in Fulton County, Ga., had their eye on Baugh from the beginning in Herndon's death.

But they didn't arrest her until 1998 on accusations that the spurned lover, realizing that her days with her rich and generous lover were numbered, set out to end things before he did.

Prosecutors believed the relationship took a turn for the worse July 10, 1996, when Baugh discovered Herndon in his home with another mistress and flew into a rage. Police arrested her for a misdemeanor charge of criminal harassment.

Although Herndon bailed out the part-time student who was 14 years his junior, prosecutors claimed that by that time, the three-time divorcee wanted the controlling and obsessive woman out of his life, but not before she returned the Mercedes he had given her.

Baugh's defense refuted that theory, claiming that things were on the mend and that Herndon intended to ask police to drop the charges.

But on the morning of Aug. 8, 1996, the day of Baugh's scheduled court appearance, Herndon's nude body was found dead in his waterbed after suffering multiple blows to the head with a blunt object.

The three alarm clocks used by the fastidious businessman, who had been recognized by two U.S. presidents and the mayor of Atlanta for his computer consulting work, had been unplugged.

Police immediately suspected someone close to Herndon, but without a murder weapon or much forensic evidence, couldn't file charges.

They zeroed in on Baugh more than a year later, when statements her mother-in-law gave during Baugh's divorce proceedings from her husband, a pilot for Air Jamaica, revealed that Baugh had visited Herndon in his home the night before he died, contrary to what she'd initially told police.

Still, Baugh's attorneys accused investigators of failing to follow up on various other possible leads, such as Herndon's other mistresses and their boyfriends, and employees and business partners he was squabbling with. Herndon's ex-wife told police he had "a lot of enemies."

"The timeline was extremely important in reaching a conviction in that it proved to directly contradict Ms. Baugh's version of the events that took place the night of Lance Herndon's murder," Ben Wilson, one of the jurors who originally convicted Baugh, told Court TV.

Nonetheless, Baugh won an appeal in 2003 based on claims that the state had built an entirely circumstantial case that relied heavily on hearsay testimony from the case's lead investigator.

Just as jurors began deliberations in the second trial, one of them was found to be "overzealous" after it was discovered that he had concealed ties to the district attorney's office. He was replaced, but jurors declared they were deadlocked in November 2003.

"I think that Ms. Baugh realized that she couldn't beat the justice system three times in a row," Wilson said of the plea agreement.

Court TV's Lena Jakobsson contributed to this report.