The state rests after putting up more 70 witnesses. The defense case-in-chief takes only 2 1/2 days. The mysterious masseuse, Annie Anderson, takes the stand. And the executor for Diane McIver's estate has a surprise in store for the prosecution. Then the defense rests, and we're down to couple of rebuttal witnesses from the prosecution. 

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The prosecution puts up the chief homicide investigator in the Tex McIver murder case and then tries its best to show how deficient the police investigation was. Normally, the district attorney and the police are on the same side. But not this time. The police charged McIver with involuntary manslaughter, but the DA went with malice murder -- convinced that the Atlanta Police Department was letting McIver off too easy. 

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The prosecution in Tex McIver's murder trial completes its third week -- a sometimes grueling slog in which the state seemed to be throwing just about everything it can find at McIver. Some if it may not be provable, but none of it looks good. And that seems to be the point. If prosecutors can't prove McIver is a cold-blooded killer, can they sway the jury by suggesting that McIver is a man you can neither trust nor like? And, of course, Tex is helping the state build its case by doing the things he did after Diane McIver died.

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The state calls Dani Jo Carter -- the only witness to the shooting of Diane McIver. She is on the stand for more than two full days. She tells the prosecution that Tex McIver asked her to lie about being in the SUV that night. But she tells the defense that she stands by her earlier statements to police that Tex was asleep before the gun went off.

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The state opens the Claud "Tex" McIver murder trial by detonating some new bombshells. McIver, the prosecution says, provided six different versions of what happened to his wife on the night she was shot. Or did he? Among the first prosecution witnesses was Emory University Hospital ER physician Suzanne Hardy, who treated Diane McIver the night she died. Yes, Hardy testified, Diane told her the shooting was an accident. And no, Hardy testified, Diane did not want to see her husband before she was intubated and rendered unable to speak. Diane McIver died shortly afterward.

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One prospective juror after another is dismissed for cause because he or she believes Tex McIver intended to kill his wife. At the end of a long week of jury selection, the parties are finally able to qualify a pool of sufficient size that they can select 12 jurors and four alternates from it. But the defense must be troubled by the sheer number of people who had already made up their minds.

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Both the prosecution and the defense have enormous challenges facing them as the trial begins. For the prosecutors, it's a question of motive. For the defense, it's the defendant himself.

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A hard-charging prosecutor goes up against a famed duo of defense attorneys as Claud "Tex" McIver's murder trial begins in one week. Chief Assistant DA Clint Rucker can dominate the courtroom by sheer force of his personality. Bruce Harvey and Don Samuel have a long history of (successfully) defending high-profile clients, from NFL stars to rappers to strippers.  

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After a long winter’s delay, the murder trial of The State v. Claud “Tex” McIver is to begin on March 5. Tex says his wife Diane’s death was a tragic accident; the district attorney says he intentionally shot her in the back. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Bill Rankin returns to bring you Season 5 of the newspaper’s Breakdown podcast.

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The jury in the double-murder case of Nicholas Benton could not hang the verdict on any single piece of evidence or testimony. That is, nothing that came up in court was so compelling that it enabled the jury to declare "guilty" or "not guilty." But what about something that came up outside of court? AJC Editor Kevin Riley wraps up his insider's account of being foreman on the jury in a murder trial.

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