Trial hinges on mental state.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

There's no question Cynthia Lee Rowe killed her brother-in-law Arthur Nguyen Rowe last spring. Opposing attorneys presenting opening arguments on Tuesday at her murder trial agree she pulled the trigger.

But the jury in Lane County Circuit Judge Douglas Mitchell's courtroom will have to determine whether she committed intentional murder or manslaughter. The difference hangs on her emotional state at the time of the shooting.

The details surrounding the crime reveal a tragic family saga of drug and alcohol abuse, fistfights and betrayals, and in the end, homicide.

Deputy District Attorney Bill Warnisher said Rowe, a 40-year-old mother of four, shot her husband's brother after a daylong drinking binge and a disagreement.

Arthur Rowe, 43, lived in a fifth-wheel trailer on his mother's three-acre property on Fox Hollow Road in Eugene. His mother lived in a house on the property, but after she died in April, he allowed Cynthia Rowe and two of her children to live in the house.

She and Charles Rowe, the victim's brother, were estranged, and the brothers didn't get along, Warnisher said.

Warnisher told the jury that Cynthia called Charles the day of the murder and told him to come to the house.

When he came, he and Arthur fought, Warnisher said, and Charles left his brother lying on the floor of his trailer with a cut on the head and broken ribs.

Cynthia came in afterward with a .22-caliber rifle and shot him twice in the head, Warnisher said.

But defense attorney Michael Ford said some of the witnesses had changed their stories during the investigation.

Cynthia Rowe was a victim herself, Ford said. Raped at 12 by a 35-year-old man, gang raped at 15, and physically abused by two husbands, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, he said. Rowe had her first drink at age 6, he said. When she was 12, her mother started taking her to bars, he said.

While she had done methamphetamine, marijuana and LSD and drank alcohol, she had also cleaned up her act and managed to stay sober for brief periods during her adult life, Ford said.

The recent death of her mother-in-law, who died in her arms, and concern over her brother-in-law's influence on her son prompted her extreme emotional distress, he said.

Warnisher objected to the details of her early life, saying they amounted to hearsay.