this decision on March 19, 1979. Trial MacDonald was brought to trial on July 16, 1979, charged with three counts of murder. He was tried in Raleigh, North Carolina, before Judge Dupree, and pleaded not guilty to the charges. MacDonald was defended by Bernard Segal and Wade Smith; James Blackburn and Brian Murtagh prosecuted the case. Initial jury selection began on this date, and would continue for three days. Although MacDonald's lawyers had been confident of an acquittal, there were successive rulings against the defense. The first such ruling was Judge Dupree's refusal to admit into evidence a 1979 psychiatric evaluation of MacDonald, which suggested that an individual of his personality and mindset was highly unlikely to be capable of killing his family. Dupree justified this refusal by stating that, as MacDonald's attorneys had not entered an insanity plea for their client, he did not wish for the trial to be hindered by opinionated and contradictory psychiatric testimony from prosecution and defense witnesses. A further defense setback was the judge's ruling against a motion to suppress the introduction of MacDonald's pajama top as evidence. On the first day of the trial, Judge Dupree allowed the prosecution to admit into evidence the March 1970 copy of Esquire magazine, found in the MacDonald house, part of which contained the lengthy article relating to the Manson Family murders. However, Dupree also refused the prosecution's request to allow any sections of the earlier Article 32 transcripts from MacDonald's 1970 Army hearing to be produced as evidence, ruling that as the current trial was a civilian trial and the Article 32 military hearing held several reports from the military investigators, which had suggested that MacDonald had murdered his family in a drug-induced rage, this evidence was also opinionated. Opening statements In his opening statement to the jury, delivered on July 19, James Blackburn outlined the burden of proof the prosecution faced in proving MacDonald's guilt; that the prosecution intended to meet this burden; and that the murders had been committed with malice aforethought. Blackburn then outlined the prosecution's intention to outline both physical and circumstantial evidence indicating MacDonald's guilt, and to introduce numerous witnesses, imploring the jurors to "listen to the evidence that comes from the witness stand, [to] examine the evidence, as it is shown to you, and reach your own conclusion". Blackburn finished his opening statement by stating to the jurors: "Basically, we