Eighty-year-old John Clark Smith Jr. sat in his wheelchair, listening through assisted-hearing earphones as the state presented its case against him.
Behind the Jacksonville man sat a few supporters.
On the other side of the courtroom were some family members. But they sat in support of Smith’s 49-year-old niece, whom he is accused of killing.
Smith is charged with first-degree murder in the September 2008 shooting of Mary Jean Back.
Responding to a 911 call, police found Back kneeling facedown and unresponsive in a front bedroom of Smith’s Lowell Avenue home on the Westside, patrol officers testified. She had been wounded by shotgun fire on her right side and died at the scene.
