SOMERVILLE, N.J. — A second former teammate of Jayson Williams testified on Thursday that an open shotgun held by Williams discharged as he jerked it upward, killing a chauffeur.
The witness, ex-Jazz player Chris Morris, who played with Williams on the New Jersey Nets from 1990 to 1994, said the fatal shot came at the end of one continuous motion, when Williams swung the gun up and it fired.
He testified that the chauffeur, Costas Christofi, 55, was standing about 5 feet from Williams, near a gun cabinet in his master bedroom, when he was shot. Christofi fell backward into a table, Morris said.
Prosecutors called Morris, 38, to support their contention that Williams was handling the gun recklessly and with indifference to human life, and thus committed aggravated manslaughter when Christofi was shot. The defense contends that the shooting was accidental.
In his testimony, Morris told Katharine Errickson, a prosecutor, that he did not hear Williams curse at Christofi before the fatal blast, as two other witnesses said this week. He also told her that Williams was holding the shotgun by its wooden stock with his right hand.
"His hand was right near the trigger," he said. But he emphasized that he did not see Williams' finger on the trigger.
Immediately after the shooting, Williams asked if Christofi "was all right," Morris said. Then his former teammate cursed about making a mistake, Morris said.
Afterward, he said that Williams tried to wipe his fingerprints from the shotgun and place the chauffeur's hand on it. He also ordered all the others in his house not to tell the police anything about the shooting until his lawyer arrived.
Later, during cross-examination, one of Williams' lawyers, William R. Martin, asked Morris if his client aimed or pointed the shotgun at Christofi.
"No," Morris answered.
Martin's questioning of Morris was brief and far less contentious than his cross-examination of Wednesday's prosecution witness, Benoit Benjamin, who also played with Williams on the Nets and, like Morris, testified with a grant of immunity at Williams' manslaughter trial.
At the time of the shooting in February 2002, both men played on the Harlem Globetrotters. Williams and five friends had watched the team play in Bethlehem, Pa., and afterward Williams invited Morris, Benjamin and two other Globetrotters back to his 65-acre estate in Hunterdon County.
At one point, Benjamin contradicted his testimony on Wednesday about whether he saw Williams' finger on the trigger. At first on Wednesday, he testified it was and he saw him pull the trigger. But later Benjamin told the judge, Edward M. Coleman, that Williams' finger was not on the trigger.
On Thursday, Martin asked him if he saw Williams pull the trigger. He answered: "Did I see Jayson pull the trigger? Yes, I saw him pull the trigger."
Williams challenged Benjamin on two parts of his Wednesday testimony: that he saw a shell in the open shotgun as Williams held it and that Williams cursed several times at the chauffeur and called him a "stoolie" immediately before the shooting.
Benjamin had testified that he saw the shell by looking over Williams' shoulder.
Martin told Benjamin that he had not said anything to detectives about a shell in the gun until late January 2003, nearly a year after the shooting.
Benjamin said he was "very traumatized" by the shooting. "As time progressed, different things came back to me," he said.