ORLANDO, Fla. — Shortly after opening statements wrapped up on Thursday, prosecutors called their first witness in the murder trial of accused downtown Orlando shooter, Jason Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, 44, is accused of barging into a downtown building on Nov. 9, 2009 and shooting computer design technician Otis Beckford to death. Five other people were wounded in the shootings.
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Attorneys for Rodriguez are trying to convince the jury that Rodriguez was insane at the time of the shootings.
The first witness to testify was Maureen Daly, who was in the office when the shooting began.
"I'm on the floor wriggling, waiting for him to come around the desk to finish me off. I'm waiting to die, and I'm praying," said Daly.
Keyondra Harrison was shot in the foot and the chest She said she was ready to be riddled with bullets.
"I was like, that's it I'm going to die," Harrison said.
"It sounded like someone was putting one gunshot in each cubicle," witness Elizabeth Bartell said.
Ferrell Hickson Jr. tried to find furniture to hide underneath.
"He stepped back and he extended his hands to fire at me," Hickson said.
Hickson says Rodriguez shot him in the leg while he was trying to hide under that desk.
In her opening statements, prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick told the jury that the issue of sanity is at issue at the time of the shooting and that Rodriguez knew right from wrong that day.
"You don't need a psychology degree. You don't need to be a psychiatrist to be able to make an evaluation on this point," said Burdick.
During the defense's opening statements, Rodriguez's attorney tried to show that her client's mental history fits the legal definition of insanity.
The defense said Rodriguez is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Rodriguez's attorneys claim that in the years prior to the shootings, Rodriguez believed he was zapped by radio waves, his brain hacked and that a voice in his head called "Sharp Tooth" torments him and tells him what to do.
"Jason Rodriguez now lives in a different world than you and I," defense attorneys said.
Defense attorneys said Rodriguez has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and Judge Belvin Perry wanted the jurors to know that upfront. He ran down a list of Rodriguez's drugs.
"Antipsychotic, antidepressant, antimanic, and anti-anxiety drugs," Perry said in the jury selection process.
WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer explained the strategy behind the jury being made aware that Rodriguez is on medications.
"What the defense is going to hope is that the jurors will think, 'If he's under this much medication at this point just to keep him sane, maybe he was insane at the time of the commission of the offense,'" said Sheaffer.
Through jury selection, Rodriguez's defense team wanted to weed out anyone with preconceived notions about mental illness.
With a possible insanity defense on the table, Perry wanted to make sure the jury knew how to handle that.
Perry told the panel it's up to the defense and no one else to prove their client is mentally unstable and shouldn't be convicted of murder.
Testimony wrapped up Thursday and is expected to resume at 9 a.m. Friday.
WFTV
