07:01 PM PST on Tuesday, February 7, 2006

By GLENN FARLEY / KING 5 News

YELM, Wash. - The trial began Tuesday for a man accused of shooting his estranged wife in her yard, leaving their baby to fend for itself in the cold.

What's at issue in this case is premeditation: Did Timothy Engh plan to shoot his wife?  

Last April 12, a woman riding her bike discovers the body of 31-year-old Brenda Engh dead in her front yard. Her 7-month-old baby was alive but lying face down in a pool of blood. The shooting horrified the neighborhood.

 Brenda Engh was in the midst of a divorce. Her husband Timothy had just been by to sign over custody of their baby daughter.

According to prosecutor Lisa Kartes Elley, a neighbor “heard him call his wife a psycho bitch and (said) he's going to kill her.”

KING

Timothy Engh, in court Tuesday

Prosecutors laid out a detailed timeline, in which Timothy Engh took a gun from an uncle’s house where he was staying. He had repeatedly told both friends, and even complete strangers, how much he hated his wife and would even kill her. This made it a case for premeditated first degree murder.

“We believe that the evidence does not show that this was a premeditated murder,” said defense attorney Robert Jimerson.

But the defense says it will paint a different picture: that Timothy Engh was leaving the house at the time of the killing, the paperwork to give up his daughter already signed; that Brenda Engh had likely followed him outside. It says nobody who Engh spoke with before the killing had felt strong enough about his threats to call police.

“What we're trying to get the jury to decide is whether or not this is first-degree murder or second-degree murder,” Jimerson said.

Engh could face 30 to 34 years on the 1st degree murder charge. Defense lawyers won't speculate on how much less he would get if he's convicted of murder in the second degree.

But murder is not the only charge Timothy Engh faces. He's also charged with both reckless endangerment of his daughter and abandonment, for leaving the child out in the cold.

Witness testimony in the trial is expected to start Wednesday.