MANASSAS, Va. -- John Wayne Bobbitt was back on the witness stand Monday, once again explaining to the world, and jurors, how his penis was slashed off by his wife.
"I felt a couple of jerks," he testified in his wife's malicious wounding trial. "After that she just cut it off."
Bobbitt, 26, was the first witness against his wife, Lorena, 24. He was acquitted of marital assault charges in the case last year.
Lorena Bobbitt, an Ecuadoran-born manicurist, faces up to 20 years in prison and deportation if she is convicted.
Before a jury of five men and seven women decide her fate, Lorena Bobbitt also is expected to take the stand.
Her lawyers told jurors they'll hear of her troubled life and marriage - a story of a Catholic girl who grew up and was forced into "aberrant sexual conduct," an abortion, and was headed for divorce. She claims she was raped the night in June 1993 that she cut off her husband's penis.
The 92-pound woman was a battered wife who felt trapped and threatened by her husband's "rapes, beating, kickings, punchings, grabbing, choking and threats of more violence," defense lawyer Lisa Kemler said in her opening statement.
The threats Lorena Bobbitt "perceived" were "more than she could endure," Kemler said. "It was her life against his penis. The evidence will show that it was from his penis that she felt she could not escape. That caused her the most pain."
Key to the defense will be convincing jurors that Lorena suffered "serious and debilitating psychotic disorders."
Prosecutor Paul Ebert, who used Lorena Bobbitt as his key witness in an attempt to convict her husband of marital sexual assault last November, told jurors any evidence of abuse by John Bobbitt "is in hopeless conflict."
"There was no excuse for her taking the law into her own hands and maiming her husband," Ebert said.
The trial, which is being broadcast live on Court TV and CNN, has drawn worldwide media attention.
Outside the courthouse, there were more reporters, onlookers and vendors selling raunchy T-shirts than there were at John Bobbitt's trial last year. Some of the T-shirts were autographed by John Bobbitt.
A line of people stood in the frigid predawn air for hours vying for about 20 seats reserved for the public.
Inside the courtroom, the proceedings were relatively quiet. But there was some tension.
Asked to identify the woman who cut his penis off, John Bobbitt pointed toward his wife - sitting just a few feet to his left - without looking.
Pressed by Ebert to better identify her, Bobbitt looked at her just as she looked at him. They both quickly looked away.
Reaction to John Bobbitt's trial last year was mixed. Some took his side. Some hers. This trial is no different.
Jenae Banton, 21, who was helping her mother sell souvenir T-shirts and boxer shorts out of red wagons, said Lorena shouldn't go to jail.
"He should go work in a battered women's shelter. She should go work in a hospital where they rehabilitate amputees. They should both get a taste of their own medicine."
