Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

A Lane County Circuit Court jury began hearing evidence Wednesday in a domestic violence case that includes a felony charge of aggravated animal abuse.

In opening arguments Wednesday afternoon, Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad

Weber, 22, also is accused of interfering with her efforts to call police and of damaging her vehicle. The Register-Guard does not generally identify crime victims.

Harcleroad told jurors that the couple's yearlong relationship turned ugly last Halloween night, when they lived together with her 6-year-old son in a trailer she owned with her father in a Seavey Loop area park. Weber touched her against her wishes, the prosecutor said, after they quarreled about him going out to drink with friends rather than show up for a planned family trick-or-treat outing.

She stayed with him after he promised not to physically harass her again, Harcleroad said, but the relationship continued to sour.

On Dec. 7, he said, the victim found the family's cat hanging from a noose inside its cage, its face smashed against a latticework door. The maximum penalty for aggravated animal abuse, a Class C felony, is five years in prison and a $125,000 fine.

A month later, on Jan. 8, Weber choked the woman in front of her son, the prosecutor said, and was arrested after several neighbors in the park called police upon hearing her cries for help and watching Weber grab and shove her and kick in the trailer door.

Weber's attorney, Jim Jagger, told jurors his client was trying to leave the woman when their Jan. 8 dispute spilled out onto the street. He said Weber obtained a restraining order against her after she threatened to stab him, threw a heavy glass Mason jar full of liquid at him and tried to hit him with his guitar.

Jagger said he would produce witnesses to testify that they heard her threaten Weber. Jagger said the alleged victim's charges against his client were her attempt at retribution for his decision to end the relationship.

During more than three hours of jury selection, some potential jurors told Lane County Circuit Judge Maurice Merten that they didn't want to serve on the case because they felt that testimony about the cat's death would be too upsetting.

"No one likes it," Merten said, but hearing such information is part of what citizens are called to do when summoned to jury duty.

The trial resumes today and is expected to last into next week.