MANASSAS, Va. -- Trial starts today to determine whether Lorena Bobbitt was a battered wife or an unbalanced slasher.
To avoid up to 20 years in prison, she must convince jurors she lifted the sheets over her sleeping husband last June 23 and sliced off his penis out of desperation and fear.
"There is no question of what happened, it's a question of why it happened," says prosecutor Paul Ebert. "The issue will be whether or not she was legally insane."
Bobbitt's lawyers would not let her talk leading up to the trial. But the 24-year-old manicurist testified during her husband's marital assault trial last November that she cut his penis because he had abused her.
John Bobbitt, who was acquitted, now has limited use of the organ, which was reattached by doctors.
Cable News Network will cover much of Lorena Bobbitt's trial live and Court TV is expected to cover it beginning this afternoon.
"The battered-woman syndrome will play a prominent role in this case," says Lorena's defense lawyer, Blair Howard. The battered-woman defense argues that a woman was so abused that she became temporarily insane and lashed out.
But John Bobbitt says his Ecuador-born wife cut him because "she was losing her American dream" and their divorce and separation "was happening to her so fast."
The couple was separating during the weekend of the attack and Lorena Bobbitt had started to move out, taking some belongings to neighbors.
She told them he abused her.
Howard says a private psychiatrist hired by the defense diagnosed Lorena Bobbitt with several mental disorders.
In 1990, a Marine Corps Family Advocacy Review Committee determined that John Bobbitt, then serving at the Marine base in Quantico, Va., had physical abused his wife at least once.
Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women says people will judge the case in part based on their own past.
"Women who have been abused will more likely side with her," she says. "Nobody knows the absolute truth in any of these cases."
Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, says Lorena Bobbitt "will be able to take advantage" of jurors' feelings.
"This case is right in the middle of a new awareness of the public on spousal violence," Rothstein says.
Rothstein says the battered-wife defense is "a persuasive argument if presented right. But it's difficult to present it right and convince a jury with an act this deliberate and premeditated."
John Bobbitt, who has launched a national media campaign - selling raunchy T-shirts to raise money for his legal and medical bills - says he has suffered nightmares about "having somebody come back and finish me off. There was only one victim. It was me."
Bobbitt once said his wife should be acquitted. Now he hopes to "see her get on the stand and get the truth out of her. I don't want this to happen to anybody else. This is a very frightening experience."
