There is no doubt that on the night of Tuesday, May 12, 2015, Terry Stineback shot and killed his wife, Laura, following a heated argument inside the master bedroom of their Dowagiac home.

It will be up to a panel of 12 Cass County men and women to determine whether or not Stineback’s actions came as the result of a coldblooded decision to end the life of his partner of 10 years or if it was because of a tragic mistake made in the heat of the moment.

Stineback, 44, faced his first day in front of a jury of his peers Tuesday, as his trial began at the Cass County Law and Courts Building, presided over by Cass County Circuit Judge Michael Dodge. The jurors will be tasked with determining whether or not the Dowagiac man is guilty on charges of open murder, assault with intent to murder and felony firearms.

Following an extensive selection that morning, the jury assembled in Dodge’s courtroom in the afternoon to listen to opening arguments from the prosecution, led by Assistant Prosecutor Tiffiny Vohwinkle, and the defense, led by Cassopolis attorney Edwin Johnson.

In their statements, both Vohwinkle and Johnson agreed that Stineback had indeed shot and killed his wife that night last May at their residence on Flanders Street in Wayne County — however, each presented divergent cases as to why what began as argument between two spouses ended in blood.

According to Vohwinkle, Laura Stineback — who was 42 at the time of her death — began her day May 12 in typical fashion, putting she and her husband’s adopted 9-year-old daughter on the bus that morning before driving her father, Joseph Haskins, to a doctor’s appointment in St. Joseph.

In meantime, she had began sending text messages to her husband, as they were having an argument — at the time, Laura had been on medical leave from her job as a nurse at Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital, having recently undergone a hysterectomy, placing the couple under a financial strain, Vohwinkle said.

“The people who knew the defendant and Laura Stineback explained that they were a normal married couple — they had some arguments, but nothing that out of the ordinary,” she said.

Terry, meanwhile, who worked as a supervisor with the Michigan Department of Transportation, had left work early that day. While not a normally angry person, on that day, he was in an odd mood — in fact, when asked by a friend how his wife was doing, he replied “I hope that crazy b**** goes back to work soon, because I can’t handle it anymore,” Vohwinkle said.

After getting off work, Terry visited the local Elks Lodge, where he ordered and drank a couple of Bloody Marys and beers, Vohwinkle said

After arriving at the house, the couple resumed their argument, which eventually got to the point where their daughter found the husband on top of his wife, strangling her. Eventually, the young girl convinced Terry to stop choking Laura, following her mom upstairs to the master bedroom, with her father following close behind.

At that point, Terry entered the bedroom, telling the daughter to leave and go to her room, locking the room behind him and his wife. While the girl stood outside the room, she heard the two continue to fight, and then heard two loud bangs followed by complete silence, the prosecutor said.

“No crying, no screaming, no ‘call 911,’ nothing,” Vohwinkle said. “For what, to a little girl who was 9, felt like an eternity. It was probably only a few minutes, but to her, it felt like an eternity. She heard nothing.”

Eventually, Terry called 911, confessing to the operator that he had shot and killed his wife, using a handgun they kept in the bedroom.

Police arrived at the house shortly thereafter, taking the daughter into their protection before ordering the man to get down on the ground. The shooter complied with the officers’ orders, not showing any signs of resistance as they took him into custody.

“He had completed what he had wanted to do,” Vohwinkle said.

Johnson, however, said the prosecutor’s picture of an angry husband’s deliberate and premeditated murder of his wife was not an accurate one. Instead, the attorney said, that while his client tragically shot and killed his wife, it wasn’t an act of murder but self-defense.

Terry had indeed been receiving argumentative text messages from his wife throughout the day, and had eventually turned his phone off due to the frequency at which she had been sending them to him, Johnson said.

Upon arriving home, his wife punched Terry in the chest and grabbed his phone, causing both to get into a struggle over control of the device, Johnson said. Eventually, Terry overpowered her and put her in a position that allowed him to control her, but not hurt her, Johnson said.

The lawyer said that his client, contrary to the prosecution’s argument, did not follow his daughter and wife up to the bedroom, but instead decided to spend the night out in his shed, where there was couch he could sleep on.

When he went upstairs to get a blanket and pillow he could use, his wife began arguing with him again. During the fight, Terry witnessed his wife dive toward the headboard, where she kept another pistol, causing him to grab his own gun and shoot her twice, under the belief she was going to fire at him first, Johnson said.

Immediately afterwards, the man realized that she wasn’t reaching for her gun, which was located in the nearby closet. Horrified with what he had done, he briefly contemplated shooting himself before deciding to dial 911, not wanting their daughter to discover two dead parents, Johnson said.

“I’m not going to suggest to you, nor is Mr. Stineback, that she deserved to die,” Johnson said. “But she had a hand in her death, and her death was not murder. There was no malice, there was no deliberation. It was self defense, under Michigan law.”

Stineback’s trial is set to resume 9 a.m. Wednesday morning.