CHARLOTTE (Court TV) — A day after showing that the state's star witness lied on the stand, Rae Carruth's defense exposed another inconsistency in his testimony Tuesday morning.

The inaccuracy in Michael Kennedy's testimony was small — the make of a car — but part of a large-scale attempt by the former NFL player's defense to discredit Kennedy, the prosecution and the police.

In the second day of his case, Carruth's attorney, David Rudolf, kept the spotlight on Kennedy and alleged attempts by the state to hide damaging information about their witness from the defense and by extension, the jury.

"It's not a matter of putting people on trial," said Rudolf outside the court. "It's about giving the jury a full picture of what happened here."

The jury did not hear much about Cherica Adams, the 24-year-old whose murder and deathbed words were the backbone of the state's case. Adams, seven-months pregnant with Carruth's baby, was fatally injured in a drive-by shooting Nov. 16, 1999. She died a month later, although her son survived. Carruth, a first-round draft pick of the Carolina Panthers, is accused of enlisting three men to help kill her because he did not want to pay child support.

One of those alleged hitmen, Kennedy testified that Carruth threatened him into being the "wheelman" in the shooting. He also told jurors that four months before the shooting, he drove Carruth and Van Brett Watkins, a career criminal who later acted as the triggerman in Adams' murder, to her apartment complex. Outside Adams' apartment, Kennedy said, the football player gave Watkins instructions for attacking Adams and causing a miscarriage.

But Rudolf tried to puncture the account by demonstrating that at least one part of it never happened. Kennedy testified that the trip to Adams' apartment began after he picked Carruth up from a body shop where the player's car was being repaired. Kennedy claimed he was driving his own car, a black Mercedes, but Rudolf called to the stand the body shop owner, who remembered a different vehicle.

Kenneth Hefner testified that he recalled Carruth being picked up by two black men driving a white Ford Expedition. Carruth owned a white Expedition. Hefner said he remembered the make and model of the car, because Carruth asked him advice about its paint job.

Hefner said he told homicide detectives the same thing in July, a fact later acknowledged on the stand by Sgt. Tom Athey, the supervisor of the police unit. Rudolf implied that the prosecution knew Kennedy's story was wrong but allowed him to testify about it anyway.

On cross examination of Athey, however, prosecutor Gentry Caudill downplayed the car issue. Caudill pointed out that Kennedy was correct about the location of the car shop, the number of men who accompanied Carruth there and the car — a red Mercedes — Carruth had repaired.

Outside court, Rudolf insisted the make of the car was not a side issue.

"I don't think it's a detail," he said. "If Mr. Kennedy is flat out wrong about something like is it a white Expedition or a black Mercedes ... why isn't it relevant to call into question what he is saying about the rest of that trip?"

Also Tuesday morning, Rudolf continued his assault on the police department, which he alleges helped Kennedy fabricate his account and then suppressed evidence requested by the defense about Kennedy's drug dealing.

Sgt. Tom Athey

While questioning Athey, the defense attorney pointed out that, when police searched for Kennedy two days after the shooting, they contacted vice officers familiar with his history of drug arrests. But when the defense requested arrest reports concerning drug dealing, the police did not look in the vice files until Nov. 28, the day Kennedy finished his testimony.

"You sat on it until Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2000, didn't you?" Rudolf charged.

"No, sir, I did not," Athey replied.

Rudolf also accused Athey and another investigator, homicide detective Tony Rice, of providing Kennedy with information so he could tailor his testimony in the case. Rudolf pointed to a Nov. 30, 1999, interview. The interview consisted of an 87-minute, untaped "preinterview" followed by a 39-minute, audiotaped interview, according to the offers.

Officer Tony Rice

If the officers weren't doing anything inappropriate, why didn't they tape the whole thing, Rudolf asked again and again.

Both men claimed they were following the unit's standard operating procedure.

"That would be something to be answered above my head," Rice said.

The prosecution made a few points of its own during a friendly cross-examination of the officers. Athey testified that Kennedy cried as he described his role in the Cherica Adams' shooting. "He said he'd been praying she'd survive," he said. In an odd detail, Athey also told jurors that when he went to Carruth's home to arrest him on Thanksgiving Day 1999, the football player answered the door stark naked and had a woman in his bedroom.