Broderick’s 2nd Murder Trial Begins : Court: She is again portrayed as either a victim or a cold-blooded executioner in the slaying of her former husband and his bride. Still, there are differences this time around.

Both sides in the second murder trial of former La Jolla socialite Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick agreed in opening remarks Tuesday that she fatally shot her ex-husband and his new wife in their bedroom.

But, although the prosecution told the jury that Broderick cold-bloodedly and with premeditation “wiped out the lives of two people,” the defense portrayed the killer as a housewife who had been victimized by the “powerful and influential” Daniel T. Broderick III.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kerry Wells told the San Diego Superior Court jury that Broderick, 43, left her home the morning of Nov. 5, 1989, and drove to the Marston Hills home of her former husband, where she killed him and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, “as they lay helpless in their sleep.”

Broderick entered their bedroom during the calm of a Sunday morning, Wells said, and “pointed a .38-caliber gun at their bodies and executed them,” leaving her ex-husband “gurgling in his own blood.”

Wells portrayed Broderick as a woman possessed by hate and the need for revenge, and as a killer who most deeply resented, not her divorce from a prominent medical malpractice attorney, but the fact that her days as a La Jolla socialite were over.

Hours later, after the afternoon recess, the jury was presented with a much different picture.

Defense attorney Jack Earley picked up a photograph of the Broderick family in happier days and slammed it to the lectern, breaking the glass and startling the jury.

Earley told the court that Broderick’s family had been shattered and that her own selfless hope was to somehow put the pieces back together.

In marked contrast to Wells, Earley described Broderick as a housewife who stood up to one of the most powerful and influential people in San Diego, who, because of his cunning as a ruthless litigator, was able to terrorize his ex-wife with a dizzying array of legal maneuvers.

As in last year’s trial, which ended in a hung jury, Wells sought to portray the newly married couple as victims, while Earley described Elisabeth Broderick as the victim.

This time around, Wells talked more about the significance of the fact that there were two shooting victims, in particular the 28-year-old Linda Kolkena Broderick, Dan’s former legal assistant, “who had her whole life in front of her.”

Earley did not agree that the couple were shot in their sleep. In fact, he said, words were exchanged and, at the moment she pulled the trigger, Elisabeth Broderick had been driven to such a state of mental distress that she was hopelessly overwhelmed.

Unlike at last year’s trial, the defense attorney used opening arguments to say that Elisabeth Broderick was the victim of an alcoholic husband who often chauffeured his children on rain-slicked streets while under the influence and who also battered his wife.

Other factors stood out Tuesday in characterizing this trial as different. Gone were the long lines of spectators snaking past the door of the courtroom. Last year, more than 100 people waited for hours to attend opening arguments.

This year, in Department 28 of Superior Court, only 32 of 36 seats were occupied at the morning session, and 12 seats were available later in the day.

Observers at this year’s trial include cameramen from a courtroom television network that plans, with Judge Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation process over, to televise the Broderick trial live.

Ten of the 12 jurors selected to hear the case last fall voted to convict Broderick of murder, while two held out for manslaughter, thus forcing the new trial.

This year’s jury includes one man who, during questioning last week, admitted to being convicted of burglary and another who said he seriously considered killing his former wife. One man nodded off during portions of Tuesday’s arguments.

This year’s trial is different for prosecutor Wells, who has a new colleague, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Burakoff, sitting next to her and providing help. In addition, Wells used a psychologist who specializes in jury selection during the seating process.

If opening arguments are an indication, this year’s trial is also different for Earley, who at times Tuesday was animated, passionate and loudly emphatic in pleading Broderick’s case.

He described her as a teacher and a mother of four whose sole interest in life was to stand by her man--through medical and law school--working while he obtained graduate degrees, and living modestly if not poorly.

Her reward for such service, Earley said, was to be “gaslighted” by a man whose overriding focus became proving to the world that his wife was crazy.

As Daniel Broderick’s need to leave the relationship became more apparent and his own lifestyle became more affluent and materialistic, “all he cared about,” Earley said, “was to show that she was off-balance.”

Earley told the jury that much will be made of the 44-year-old Daniel Broderick’s payments of more than $16,000 a month in alimony to Broderick, but, he noted, the attorney was a multimillionaire making more than $100,000 a month at the time of his death.

The arena in which the war of the Brodericks occurred “was his battleground,” Earley argued. “He said, ‘OK, if you want to fight, you’re going to be in the ring with Muhammad Ali. You’re going to be in here with a heavyweight litigator. We’re going to litigate this case the hardest way we can.’ ”

The result, Earley said, was that Elisabeth Broderick was left “with an avalanche sometime in 1989. She was not going to win. She would not come out with anything considered fairness . . . at any point in time.

“You will see,” he told the jury, “that this person was wounded and wounded, mentally, physically. . . . She was left in a severe state of depression, and the anger was as much at herself as anyone else. She couldn’t dig out from under the avalanche.”

When telling his wife he wanted out of the marriage--while denying his extramarital affair with Linda Kolkena--Daniel Broderick, in Earley’s words, told her she was “old, fat, ugly and boring.”

In contrast, Wells told the jury that Elisabeth Broderick had informed friends that she intended to make her ex-husband’s life “a living hell, or I’m going to murder him.”

Wells said Broderick shattered “what had been a warm, peaceful Sunday morning for two living human beings . . . that exploded into violence” when she fired the gun five times.

Wells said Broderick’s intentions constitute murder, not manslaughter. “In the end,” she said, “the evidence will show that.”

Broderick is being held without bail in the Las Colinas Jail in Santee. If convicted, she faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.