OCALA -- Jurors began deliberating Wednesday in the attempted-extortion trial of Dr. James Scott Pendergraft, one of Florida's best-known abortion providers.

During a three-week trial, federal prosecutors portrayed Pendergraft as a money-hungry practitioner who with his adviser, Michael Spielvogel, created a tangled web of lies in order to extort money from Marion County.

Defense attorneys told jurors that Pendergraft, as a defender of a woman's right to choose in a community hostile to abortions, was being persecuted by prosecutors with a political agenda.

After deliberating almost seven hours Wednesday, jurors went home without reaching a decision. They were expected to continue deliberating this morning.

Pendergraft is charged with conspiracy, attempted extortion and mail fraud. Spielvogel faces the same charges plus two extra charges of lying to the FBI and making a false statement. If convicted as charged, Pendergraft faces up to 30 years in prison, Spielvogel up to 40 years.

Officer kills man he says tried to run him down

GAINESVILLE -- A Gainesville police officer shot and killed a driver who he said tried to run him down.

Officer Jimmy Hecksel, 29, was placed on administrative leave pending investigations into the traffic stop and the shooting.

Police Chief Norman Botsford said it appears Hecksel believed his life was in danger when he shot Corey Paul Rice, 30, a University of Florida employee, early Tuesday.

Hecksel pulled Rice over about 1:30 a.m. on a traffic infraction, Officer Keith Kameg said.

Kameg said Hecksel walked to Rice's car and was talking to him when Rice backed the car up several feet and started driving toward Hecksel. Hecksel fired several shots at the car. Rice continued driving about two blocks before he crashed into a fence, got out of the car and collapsed. He died about four hours later.

Cigarette butt provides DNA evidence for arrest

WEST PALM BEACH -- DNA from a cigarette butt tossed to the ground by a chiropractor as he talked to detectives matched DNA from a bloody shirt the doctor threw away the day his wife was beaten with a baseball bat, authorities say.

Joseph Anthony, 54, is charged with aggravated battery in the Oct. 12 beating of his estranged wife, 46-year-old Judy Anthony, who survived. He is being held in the Palm Beach County Jail.

Palm Beach County sheriff's detectives think Joseph Anthony dressed as a burglar and struck his now ex-wife in the head eight times, a month after a judge ordered him to pay her $4,000 a month in their divorce settlement.

Anthony smoked half a cigarette as he talked to a detective outside his Boynton Beach business shortly after the beating, then threw the butt on the ground. A detective picked up the butt.

Later, detectives found a shirt with his wife's and someone else's blood on it. DNA from saliva on the cigarette butt and blood on the shirt matched, authorities say. Anthony was arrested in December.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk