Prosecutor Pounds Mack on Claim of Blackout : Shooting: Robert Earl Mack’s explanation that he has no memory of shooting two former co-workers at General Dynamics’ Convair Division is ‘convenient,’ a deputy district attorney says.

A prosecutor peppered Robert Earl Mack with questions Thursday in a lengthy cross-examination that implied that Mack fabricated his story of blacking out just before a shooting spree that left one General Dynamics official dead and another severely wounded.

“A blackout is about as convenient a defense as you can have at this point,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Sickels said to Mack at one point in his questioning.

The day before, Mack, 43, testified under questioning from his attorney that he has absolutely no recollection of shooting two men in the back of the head following a grievance hearing Jan. 24 at the Lindberg Field manufacturing plant operated by General Dynamics’ Convair Division.

According to testimony presented earlier in the trial, Mack shot and wounded his former supervisor, 52-year-old James English, then fatally shot Michael Konz, a 25-year-old labor negotiator.

Although Mack testified that he planned to kill himself at his former place of employment in order to make a political statement about the firm’s treatment of blacks, prosecutors allege Mack had planned to target the men he saw as responsible for firing him from his lifelong job.

Sickels calmly and methodically asked Mack to detail a series of bizarre hallucinations that the fired worker experienced during his blackout, including a sensation of riding a big, black cat when in fact he was gunning down two officials at the aerospace firm.

After emerging from his unconscious state, Mack said, he looked over the carnage he had wrought and saw “a country scene.”

A police officer coming toward him looked “like a cowboy with a gun out,” Mack testified. “He was looking for somebody, (there were) tumbleweeds rolling past.”

Although Mack had previously testified he was so poor one month before the shooting that he could not afford a Christmas tree or presents, Sickels introduced evidence showing that Mack took home more than $2,800 in a six-week period before the attack.

Sickels asked Mack numerous times if he was angry with General Dynamics or the supervisor he targeted during the shooting spree. Although he was “frustrated” about many things that occurred, Mack said, the only thing that angered him was his naivete, which allowed General Dynamics officials to use company policy against him.

The prosecution in the case is based on the theory that Mack was angry about being fired from the advanced cruise missile assembly line after a series of absences and late arrivals for work.

Mack has denied the charges of murder and attempted murder for which he is on trial. Although Mack previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, that plea was withdrawn, and defense attorney Michael Roake is planning to ask the jury hearing the case to acquit his client because Mack had no knowledge of his actions at the time of the shooting.

“We are not relying on a diminished capacity or insanity defense,” Roake told Superior Court Judge Richard Murphy on Thursday.

In other testimony Thursday, Mack said he spent his last $40 when he bought a .38-caliber revolver on the morning of the shootings. Mack described driving his damaged car about six blocks from his home to meet a man who sold the weapon--bullets included.

After Mack finished testifying, a psychologist testified that her evaluation of Mack was consistent with his claim that he intended to kill himself on the day of the attack.