The murder case against James R. Ray III was never short on drama.
Mr. Ray, a former Marine and entertainment lawyer, fled to Cuba after Angela Bledsoe, the mother of his then 6-year-old daughter, was found shot to death in 2018 in the home they shared in Montclair, N.J. He was arrested after a weeklong international manhunt.
Then, nearly a year later, parts of an 18-page diary that Mr. Ray purportedly wrote in the days after the shooting were read in court, suggesting that he had killed Ms. Bledsoe in self-defense but had tried to escape because he did not believe a Black man could get a fair trial in the United States.
On Wednesday morning, after years of delays linked to pandemic shutdowns and court backlogs, the trial is expected to begin in Essex County Superior Court in Newark.
Mr. Ray’s lawyers will not dispute that he fired the fatal shots, but they will argue that he did so because he felt that his life was in danger.
“The case rises and falls on self-defense,” said Brooke M. Barnett, one of Mr. Ray’s two lawyers. “There’s no eyewitnesses. It’s just him and her. She picked up the gun. It’s action versus reaction. He was in fear of his life.”
Mr. Ray, now 60, has been in jail in Newark awaiting trial since he was charged with murder and weapons possession in the Oct. 22, 2018, death of Ms. Bledsoe, the youngest of four children, who was known as Angie and was 44 when she died of gunshot wounds.
“She was our little baby,” Ms. Bledsoe’s mother, Gaynelle Bledsoe, 79, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“For four years, we have been unable to do much of anything at all,” said Ms. Bledsoe’s father, Ray Bledsoe, 81. “It’s been a toll.”
After the shooting, Mr. Ray left the couple’s daughter, Alana, with his brother, who discovered a note and Mr. Ray’s cellphone in his niece’s suitcase, according to a police report. Mr. Ray’s brother called the police in Montclair, who discovered Ms. Bledsoe’s body in the six-bedroom home in Upper Montclair, an affluent section of the township of 41,000 about 20 miles west of Midtown Manhattan.
Soon after, Mr. Ray’s BMW was found in a parking lot at Newark Liberty International Airport. The search for Mr. Ray was the stuff of movies, with leaders from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Homeland Security Department joining the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office in celebrating his arrest after an Interpol alert led to his capture by officials in Cuba as he tried to enter that country, which has no extradition treaty with the United States.
“If you commit a crime in the state of New Jersey, we will not forget, we will not forgive, and we will find you,” Gregory W. Ehrie, then the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Newark office, said at the time. “The world has become a very small place.”
Mr. Ray, who spent two years as a New York City police officer before getting his M.B.A. and going to law school, faces life in prison if convicted of killing Ms. Bledsoe. She worked as a financial consultant and spent much of her time after graduating from Florida A&M University living in New York City, where Mr. Ray had a law office.
A large contingent of Ms. Bledsoe’s relatives from Maryland and Florida, classmates from college and members of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, are expected to fill the courtroom during the trial. Her sister, Lisa LaBoo, who with her husband is raising Alana in Florida, had buttons made bearing her younger sister’s photo.
A doting aunt, Ms. Bledsoe once flew to London to watch her niece compete in a competition for cheerleading — a sport Ms. LaBoo said Alana, 10, now also enjoys.
Ms. LaBoo said she had admired her sister’s ability to find God in everyday moments.
“When good things would happen during the day she’d say, ‘God winked at me today,’” Ms. LaBoo recalled.
“She was beautiful on the inside and out,” she added through tears. “We’re praying for justice.”