A Boston man whose first-degree murder conviction was overturned on appeal faces a second trial today for allegedly strangling his estranged wife to death in her Chelsea apartment nine years ago.

AGAPITO LAO (D.O.B. 7/10/58) is again charged with first-degree murder for allegedly strangling 40-year-old Alicia Lao, who was found unconscious in her Bellingham Street apartment on the morning of May 2, 2000. Her boyfriend, who found her, immediately called Chelsea Police, who arrived minutes later along with emergency medical technicians. Lao was brought to Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett, but never regained consciousness and died on May 17, 2000.

Lao suffered a stab wound to her arm, bruises to her neck, chest and arm, and a lack of oxygen to her brain. An autopsy found her cause of death to be manual strangulation.

An investigation into her death by State Police homicide detectives assigned to the Suffolk DA’s office and Chelsea Colice identified Agapito Lao, the victim’s estranged husband, as her alleged killer. Agapito Lao was charged with the murder on June 27, 2000, and convicted after a five-day trial in June 2002.

In 2007, over prosecutors’ arguments, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the trial jury should not have heard certain testimony from a Chelsea Police officer and a relative of the victim and that a 2006 motion for a new trial should have been allowed.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee, deputy chief of the DA’s Homicide Unit, is trying the case with defense attorney Gary Schubert before Judge Charles Spurlock in courtroom 808 of Suffolk Superior Court.