Anthony Wayne Smith, a defensive lineman who played for eight years in the 1990s for the NFL's Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders, will stand trial for four murders.

The killings came in a nine-year span beginning after Smith's career in the NFL concluded.

Smith had already been tried for one of the killings: the 2008 death of Maurilio Ponce, a mechanic found stomped, beaten and shot along a Southern California desert highway in what prosecutors called a business deal gone wrong.

A jury deadlocked 8-4 in April in favor of guilt, and in July while awaiting retrial, Smith was charged with the other murders.

The other murders are a 1999 killing of Kevin and Ricky Nettles, who were kidnapped from a Los Angeles car wash and shot to death, as well as the 2011 killing of Dennis Henderson.

Defense attorney Daniel Evans said prosecutors have cited no credible motive in any of the cases, and said they all lack physical evidence.

"There's no DNA evidence, there's no fingerprints evidence, there's no ballistics evidence that tie him to any of these cases," Evans told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday night.