CROWN POINT | Jerri Finnearty shot her 41-year-old husband, Michael, in the head while he lay in bed in their Calumet Township home, a Lake County prosecutor and defense attorney agreed Monday.

The two sides concurred on little else during the first day of Jerri Finnearty's jury trial.

Finnearty faces a murder charge for the Jan. 23, 2006, shooting death of her husband.

Trial Supervisor Mary Ryan, with the Lake County prosecutor's office, argued Monday that Finnearty shot her husband while he was asleep -- so asleep he was snoring loudly.

Ryan showed a glossy photo of Michael Finnearty's body to the Lake County Criminal Court jury.

"He's clearly fast asleep," she said.

Finnearty's attorney, Steven Mullins, said Jerri Finnearty shot her husband when he woke up as she was trying to leave him. No deposition mentions snoring, he added.

"Yeah, it looks like he's asleep here," Mullins said, nodding at the photo. "He's dead."

Mullins acknowledged Finnearty shot her husband but told jurors it was the result of years of abuse by Michael Finnearty to his wife and their children.

"He's been beating her for years," Mullins quoted the testimony of one of the couple's sons. He paused, repeated it. "This case didn't begin Jan. 23, 2006. It began 23 years ago ... with threats, beatings, intimidation."

Mullins said Jerri Finnearty suffered from battered woman's syndrome and that he will argue his client is not responsible for her actions. He also pointed to self-defense.

The breaking point was when Michael Finnearty suggested a threesome during the couple's lovemaking, Mullins and Ryan agreed.

Jerri Finnearty said she'd put up with a lot in their marriage, including his having a girlfriend who lived in a trailer on the property, but she was not interested in "extra sexual activities," court records say.

She told him she was tired of living this way, and she wanted out of the marriage. Michael Finnearty grabbed a gun, put it to her head and told her "that the only way she was going to leave and get out would be 6 feet under," records allege.

Jerri Finnearty told police she tried to apologize and asked to be let go, but he held her and the gun to her head for several hours before he finally fell asleep.

At that point, Jerri Finnearty got up, took out a .22-caliber pistol she kept in the dresser and shot her husband once in the head.

Michael Finnearty's mother, Marilyn Stark, said she cut her son out of her life for two years after she found out he was living in the same house with both his wife and girlfriend.

That was more than 10 years before he was killed.

When Stark questioned the arrangement, she was told by Michael and Jerri Finnearty to butt out.

"They were all in one house, just one big happy family, I guess," Stark said.

She admitted her grandson, Michael Finnearty Jr., moved in with her for a time after he was beaten by his father, she testified. There were no visible marks on her grandson as a result of the beating.

Jerri Finnearty confessed to both Lake County police and Sandra Heston, an acquaintance who answered the ambulance call to the Finneartys' home.

Mullins told jurors that Jerri Finnearty will testify during her trial. The trial is expected to last through the middle of next week.

If convicted, Finnearty faces a maximum of 65 years in prison.