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DADE CITY - After his roommate was shot four years ago, Thomas Straight admitted to Pasco County sheriff's detectives that he had pulled the trigger. Then Straight broke down sobbing.
A decidely stoic version of the former Zephyrhills psychologist, now 64, appeared beside his lawyer for the first day of his trial Tuesday.
His trial continues today. If convicted of manslaughter, Straight faces 15 years in prison.
A day of testimony from witnesses called by prosecutor Phil Van Allen stripped credibility from key pieces of Straight's lengthy, emotional interviews with investigators just after the shooting.
Dr. Laura Hair fielded questions about the autopsy she had performed on Charles David Hood, 36, after he was shot May 5, 2000, at the home he and Straight shared. Hair said the official cause of death was a shotgun wound to the head, which had entered Hood's body through the roof of his mouth.
Later in the day, James Bucenell, a former sheriff's detective who questioned Straight at length after the shooting, testified that he noticed a problem right away with Straight's initial story.
Straight had told one of the first sheriff's deputies to arrive at the scene about 3:30 a.m. that the shotgun had gone off near Hood's face.
But that would have been impossible, Bucenell said, because the entrance wound was in Hood's mouth. The barrel of the gun would have to be in Hood's mouth for the wound to occur there, he said.
"I explained that that's not the way that happened," Bucenell said. "He started crying and said, "Okay, I'll tell you the truth.' "
Yet in a subsequent videotaped interview presented to the jury, Straight said repeatedly that he did not remember the gun barrel being in Hood's mouth. "To my knowledge, it wasn't in his mouth," Straight told Bucenell in the taped interview. "I don't remember seeing that at all."
"It doesn't match up," Bucenell replied.
When he saw Hood fall, Straight said he ran immediately to dial 911. At the time he told dispatchers that Hood, who had a history of substance abuse problems and paranoia, had shot himself.
Later Straight amended the story, saying that Hood had threatened suicide until Straight talked him out of it. Then he handed the gun to Straight and asked him to fire it.
"He said he was positive it was empty," Straight said during the video interview.
He said he thought Hood was trying to "guilt-trip him" into firing the weapon, and he wasn't about to make it a power struggle.
"If I don't do it, he's going to make an issue out of it," Straight added.
Straight said Hood opened the chamber for him beforehand, and Straight saw no shells inside.
Tuesday's jury got a firsthand look at the weapon in the courtroom. John Romeo, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab analyst who examined Straight's weapon, guided them through the gun's workings.
Romeo testified that the chamber could appear empty even if the gun was loaded, responding to questions from Robert Norgard, Straight's attorney.
That's because Straight's shotgun had room for two more shells in its magazine, which feeds into the chamber and is not readily visible. In order to move these shells into the shotgun chamber, the gun's pump must be moved forward. The chamber holds one additional shell, making for a total of three in the gun.
"If two bullets were ejected first, where is the third?" Van Allen asked Romeo in a cross-examination.
Romeo replied that it would be in the chamber. According to Straight, Hood had fired "dummy shells" from the gun earlier in the evening, just to scare his visiting friend and Straight.
Straight said in his taped interviews that he bought the shotgun, which he kept in his bedroom closet, in response to what he called Hood's mounting "paranoia."