POMEROY — Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the murder trial of Paula Rizer, after a state’s motion for a continuance was denied in Meigs County Common Pleas Court.

Rizer is accused in the April shooting death of her husband at the couple’s home near Portland.

Thursday, Judge Fred W. Crow III denied a motion by prosecutors in the case for a continuance of the trial. Potential jurors have been served and voir dire — questioning of individual potential jurors — will begin early Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the court said.

Prosecutor Colleen S. Williams and Assistant Prosecutor Matthew Donohue filed a motion Wednesday to continue the trial so Rizer could undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Williams said the evaulation was necessary because the defense plans to introduce psychological evidence at trial.

In his motion opposing a continuance, Defense Counsel Herman Carson said Williams has been aware, since at least June 21, that a psychologist had been retained by the defense. He said he advised Williams on Aug. 19 that Dr. Kris Haskins of Columbus was one of the experts he planned to call as witnesses.

Carson also said an “eleventh-hour” continuance would be contrary to the local rules of court and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Rizer’s trial is expected to continue into early November. She is accused of shooting her husband five times in the chest at their Lovett Road home in Lebanon Township. Defense counsel, Carson and Glenn Jones, will set out to prove she was firing in self-defense.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed witnesses ranging from the administrator at the Washington County Jail, where Rizer has been incarcerated since her April arrest, agents with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification, sheriff’s deputies, EMS Adminstrator Doug Lavender, and Health Commissioner Larry Marshal, as well as agents with Home National Bank and State Farm Insurance.

Williams has also subpoenaed a deputy coroner from Montgomery County, where an autopsy was performed on Kenny Rizer, Sr.

Carson said last week he and Jones will rely heavily on forensic science to prove Rizer and her husband were in the midst of an altercation or argument at the time the shots were fired, and that when the shots were fired, Kenny Rizer, Sr. was not sitting or sleeping in the recliner in which his body was found.

The key witness for the defense will likely be Brent Turvey, an Alaska-based forensic scientist who will reconstruct the crime scene, and attempt to prove that blood spatter patterns and other forensic evidence point to self-defense.

The prosecution has announced its intention to perform forensic tests as well in proving its case against Rizer, including results of a test for forensic evidence on the overalls and clothing Rizer, Sr. was wearing at the time of his death.

Carson has asked that the recliner in which Rizer’s body was discovered and a pillow from the crime scene be provided by witnesses as evidence.