A wife who was caught on camera hiring a an undercover cop to kill her newlywed husband told a court she was acting in a bid to become famous on a reality TV show and was threatened to go along with the scheme by a police informant.

Dalia Dippolito spoke at a hearing ahead of her retrial for allegedly trying to pay a hitman $3,000 to murder spouse Michael in 2009, after the pair had only been married six months.

The 32-year-old became an internet sensation when hidden cameras from the show Cops captured her crying in 2009 as officers in Boyton Beach, Florida, revealed he was dead.

It was later revealed that he was still alive and cops had set up the scene to catch Dippolito's ploy in the act.

She admits her tears were fake - but only because she and her husband had formulated the plan together in a bid to be famous after getting the idea from another actor.

During her court appearance on Wednesday, she reiterated that she didn't want to kill her husband and was pressured into saying it.

She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2011 for solicitation to commit first-degree murder with a firearm, but the case was thrown out in 2014 after evidence of police misconduct surfaced during appeals.

Now she is facing a retrial after Boynton Beach judge Glenn Kelley said the case had been hanging around for too long.