Lindsay Shiver, a former beauty queen charged in the Bahamas with plotting to hire a hitman to kill her estranged husband, ex-American footballer Robert Shiver, has mounted a last-ditch legal effort to have the case thrown out. Her newly appointed lawyer argues that Bahamian authorities have no jurisdiction to prosecute her because she was in the United States when the alleged plotting took place, meaning any conspiracy occurred outside the country. The move matters because, if successful, it could void the long-delayed trial entirely and even open the door to a wrongful-arrest claim against the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The case rests on WhatsApp messages Shiver, 39, allegedly sent in July 2023 to her barman lover, Adrien Bethel, 30, and his friend, Faron Newbold Jr, 31, including a photo of her husband at a beach bar with an instruction to "kill him". Her lawyer, Terrel Butler, stresses that these messages were sent before she arrived in the Bahamas, where she was later arrested. Shiver, crowned Miss Houston County in 2005 and a mother of three, faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted. Her trial, repeatedly postponed, is now scheduled to begin on 2 November, more than three years after she was charged.