POMEROY — Jury deliberations will begin Tuesday in the second murder trial of Paula Rizer, Portland.

Both sides concluded closing arguments in Meigs County Common Pleas Court early Friday evening, and jurors opted to go home for the weekend and return Tuesday to begin their deliberations. Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the courthouse is closed.

Rizer is accused of murder. She was acquitted of aggravated murder in October, but the jury could not reach a unamimous verdict on the lesser charge.

Prosecutors say Rizer fired six shots at her husband, Kenneth Rizer, Sr., while in his reclining chair.

Rizer, in her second trial, has claimed self defense as her motive, alleging that she and her husband had been arguing on April 3, 2009, and that she fired shots at him during a physical struggle between them in order to escape his clutches.

Kenneth Rizer had been retired for over a year at the time of his death. Spending a lot of time together in their country home near Portland, he and Paula Rizer had been experiencing increasing problems within their marriage, and Rizer has said her husband had become physically abusive to her, knocking her off a tractor at one point, and striking her with a paddle at another.

Paula Rizer has held a number of jobs in her adult life, including a job as a buyer for Elberfeld’s Department Store, a rural mail carrier, and a temporary worker for the U.S. Census Bureau. She testified that she had expressed an interest in returning to work, but that she and her husband were relatively secure financially, and that he had been generally opposed to her returning to work.

Instead, she had been spending her time on a number of hobbies. For a while, she participated in auto racing. She was a gardener, and she and her husband were developing a larger plot of garden land at the time of the shooting. She was also involved in redecorating their manufactured home, because the Rizers had decided in the days and weeks leading up to Kenneth’s death to sell their home and land to one of Kenneth’s sons and his new wife.

In fact, Rizer told jurors in this second trial that she would have liked to have moved out of Meigs County — a point Williams has reinforced in characterizing the defendant as an angry, unhappy woman.

The defendant also had a crafting business, selling purses on an online site. She bought antiques and resold them on E-Bay.

Paula Rizer and her husband had also assumed primary responsibility for her granddaughter, a kindergarten student, who was living with them on the day Kenneth Rizer died. The granddaughter’s living situation, and other family matters, were at the heart of the issues the two were experiencing that wet, muddy April day.

The Rizers had been arguing most of the day on April 3, 2009, and had tried unsuccessfully to have sexual intercourse, something the two were experiencing increasing difficulty with. Kenneth Rizer’s large stature, physical aches and pains, and erectile dysfunction limited their sexual activity, Paula Rizer testified, and he had become increasingly aggressive in the bedroom.

Rizer said her husband blamed her physical appearance for his increasing inability to perform sexually. She had undergone a radical mastectomy in her early 30’s, and while she later underwent reconstructive surgery, she still has scars on her upper body.

The two went grocery shopping on April 3, but had argued for most of the outing. When they returned home to Lovett Road from Pomeroy, and the groceries were put away, Kenneth Rizer fell asleep in his chair. His wife began working on a redecorating project in a spare room.

Rizer told this second jury she agreed to learn how to use a 9-mm handgun that afternoon at her husband’s insistence, but she had tried to continue their discussion of family issues before they did so. When she insisted that he help her with the gun, she said, he lunged out of his chair, and threatened to get the paddle which was hanging in their kitchen.

She told the jury she turned around sideways on the sofa, but ended up on the floor. The two struggled with the gun, while she had hold of his pants leg and he her right hand.

She fired the shots, she said, in order to distract him and allow her to escape to another part of their home.

Prosecuting Attorney Colleen Williams, in closing arguments Friday, said Rizer’s repeated additions and changes to her story about what happened make hers a “fish story.”

“None of it makes any sense,” Williams said. “Why would a man who abuses his wife give her a gun in order to protect herself?”

Williams urged the jury to look at the big picture, rather than picking and choosing evidence for consideration.

Rizer’s lead counsel, Herman Carson, faulted Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation agents with faulty crime scene investigation. He quoted one of the agents, Larry Willis, who in an interview with the defendant told her he wanted to “hurry up and get this closed out.”

“Taking shortcuts in the beginning does not save time in the long run,” Carson said.

He said the paddle, which was entered into evidence in this second trial, is a “symbol of the brutality” that had increasingly become prevelant in the Rizer’s home.

“It was a household secret,” Carson said. “In answer to (Williams’) question, in hindsight, it was really bad judgment on Mr. Rizer’s part to give his wife a loaded gun and then attack her.”