Mark Becker Trial: With The Jury

((HT: KWWL-TV))

Mark Becker's defense is based on a plea of not guilty by insanity to the shooting of Aplington-Parkersburg ((IA)) high school head football coach Ed Thomas.

Prosecutors didn't spend a lot of time on the evidence that Becker shot Thomas in front of 20 witnesses. Instead, both sides focused final arguments on the definition of "sanity."

Prosecutors told jurors that Mark Becker had a choice.
He made the choice to shoot his former coach.

For the state, their best argument against an insanity plea was all the careful preparation Becker made to hunt down the coach that day.

Becker's attorneys claim that responding to irrational impulses and illusions are signs of a mental disease, not pre-meditation of a crime.

"No one made Mark Becker say these things he talks about his plan how he practiced he explained it in an interview you can hear it in his own voice," said Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown- the lead prosecutor for the case.

"Voices were telling him to do bad things he thought he was under a spell," said his defense attorney, Susan Slander.

Here's noon-time, team coverage from KWWL with both Jamie Grey and Colleen O'Shaughnessy outside the courthouse freezing...