Turner takes stand

In what legal experts say was a rare move, Dr. Kirk Alan Turner took the stand in Davie Superior Court late yesterday afternoon in his own defense against a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Jennifer.

More than 70 people sat in the courtroom as Turner, a prominent dentist with a practice in Clemmons, described a marriage that went downhill as his wife's interest in horses grew.

"We didn't spend any time together," he said. "She was into horses and I was working on the barn."

Jennifer Turner would berate him for not working fast enough on the barn and Kirk Turner said he would tell her that the horse business she was starting was expensive. Before they separated, he said, he was spending up to $30,000 a month on the horse business, utilities, the mortgage, health insurance, car insurance and other things. He said he gave her $8,000 in cash every month.

The only time Kirk Turner became emotional during his testimony is when Joe Cheshire, one of his attorneys, asked about a genital birth defect he has. Kirk Turner said he has hypospadias, a defect in which the urethra opens at a spot other than at the tip of the penis.

He told the jury, which is made up of eight men and four women, that Jennifer Turner would often tease him about the condition. He paused for a second when Cheshire asked him what his wife would say about his birth defect, his voice choking up a bit as he answered.

"She called it my ‘pretty parts,'" he said.

Defense attorneys have said that Kirk Turner was defending himself after Jennifer Turner stabbed him in the left thigh near the groin with a 7-foot-long Viking-like spear. According to a search warrant, Kirk Turner had said that his wife told him she was going to stab his "pretty parts" when she attacked him.

Prosecutors have said that Kirk Turner was so angry at a divorce and a lawsuit his wife filed against his girlfriend, Tondja Woods Colvin, that he slit her throat twice on Sept. 12, 2007, in the shop building at their house at 627 Jack Booe Road, just north of Mocksville.

Turner's testimony is a "high moment" in the trial, said Ron Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest University.

"If I was in a jury and someone made a self-defense claim, I would want to hear from him," Wright said. "The defense attorney knows the case, and he believes it will help his case."

Turner is expected to be the last witness for the defense attorneys. He will face a long cross-examination from prosecutors who will point out any inconsistencies in Turner's testimony and his prior statements that Kirk Turner gave to investigators, legal experts say.

The Fifth Amendment gives a defendant the right not to testify against himself.

"It is very rare for criminal defendants, especially murder defendants, to testify at their trials because the burden of proof is on the state," said Kami Chavis Simmons, an associate law professor at Wake Forest University and a former assistant U.S. attorney in Washington.

But Kirk Turner must testify to persuade the jury to believe him and his self-defense theory, said Carol Teeter, a criminal-defense attorney in Winston-Salem.

"His testimony has to be that he didn't intentionally try to cut his wife's throat or that he was just slinging his knife, and he just happened to hit her in the throat," Teeter said.

Yesterday's testimony didn't get to the night of Sept. 12, 2007, when Jennifer Turner was killed.

Instead, Kirk Turner talked about the happy times he had with his wife, whom he dated for only seven weeks before they went to Las Vegas to tie the knot in 1984. He talked about the weekends he, Jennifer, and their two children spent sailing their boat.

But he also talked about the arguments they had over raising their son and the money he was spending on Jennifer's horse business. And he testified that the couple grew so far apart that his friendship with Colvin, who handled the couple's finances, turned into an affair.

"I'm ashamed of it," he told the jury.

But, he said, he did not intend to kill his wife. And he said that the only other fight he ever got into was with a girl in the first grade.

Though he may have been upset with Jennifer, he said he never hated her and he doesn't hate her now.

In other testimony yesterday, Marilyn Miller, a professor of forensic science at Virginia Commonwealth University, said under cross-examination that she believes it would have been impossible for Kirk Turner to have stabbed himself in the left thigh as a way to cover up killing his wife.

She testified last week that Jennifer Turner stabbed her husband with the spear first before Kirk Turner stabbed her in self-defense.

Miller said yesterday that Kirk Turner walked out of the shop building, pausing to get some towels for his wounds and sought help. He then went back into the building, knelt beside his dying wife and then went to the office of the shop building, where paramedics later found him.

■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.

■ John Hinton can be reached at 727-7302 or at jhinton@wsjournal.com.

■ Journal reporter Richard Craver contributed to this report.