TYLER, Texas — Keith Laney still loves his wife. The fact that she killed their two sons and permanently injured a third because she thought God told her to hasn't changed that, the 47-year-old testified Tuesday at Dee Laney's capital murder trial.

Wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans, Laney told jurors that he has tried over and over to make sense of what his wife did without warning on May 10, 2003.

He was asleep when Dee Laney used large rocks to attack her sons, and woke up after the killings were committed to find a sheriff's deputy standing in the doorway to his bedroom pointing a pistol at his face.

"Did you ever see anything to suggest ... she was having thoughts about doing this to your children?" Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham asked the bearded witness with salt-and-pepper hair.

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"Never," Keith Laney said, adding after a long pause, "I don't understand."

Laney was one of several family members of the defendant called by prosecutors as they move through what appears to be a half-hearted prosecution.

Dee Laney, 39, is charged with capital murder, but the prosecution's own experts have concluded that she was legally insane when she committed the killings.

Gary Bell, Dee Laney's brother-in-law and the pastor of her church, testified that the defendant was a devoted and loving wife, mother and Christian who believed deeply in her Pentecostal convictions.

One of those beliefs is that Jesus Christ will return to Earth one day and on occasion speaks to the faithful.

Bell, who is married to Dee Laney's sister, recalled an incident at least a year before the killings where Dee Laney told other members of the congregation that God had spoken to her in some way.

"Dee came down as I remember and said to me she had something she would like to share," said Bell, pastor of the First Assembly of God Church in Tyler. "The gist of what she shared with the church was that God ... had communicated to her that she should get her house in order because the Lord was coming."

Laney never said anything about harming her children and the incident did not ring any alarm bells because it was consistent with the Pentecostal beliefs that more than 14 million people share, Bell told jurors.

"We live constantly with this belief that we should stay ready," he said.

The second day of Laney's trial, which is receiving widespread media attention, began with jurors viewing a 70-minute videotape police made of the Laney family's home and five-acre property in nearby New Chapel Hill.

Laney wept as the camera zoomed in on the bodies of her sons, who were found near the rock garden where they were killed.

Joshua, 8, and Luke, 6, had large rocks on their chest when police arrived. At least one juror looked away as the bodies were shown.

The police cameraman then moved toward the front door of the family's well-kept home. On one side of a stone path there was a hand-crafted sign that read, "Mom's Love Grows Here." The sign on the opposite side of the path read, "Thank God For Mothers."

Keith Laney testified that the two boys who died created the signs in Sunday school. In addition to being the youth minister at the church, Dee Laney sang in the choir there.

From outward appearances, the Laneys were a loving couple who built their home around family and children, Bell said.

"Their home was a loving and warm place to be ... The children were greatly loved, and Dee and Keith loved one another," he said. "It was just a model family from my perspective."

If convicted of capital murder, Dee Laney faces life in prison and would not be eligible for parole for 40 years. If acquitted by reason of insanity, she would likely be committed to a forensic mental health facility for an unspecified period of time.

Bingham indicated in his opening statement Monday that "the system" will have functioned properly regardless of whether Laney is convicted or acquitted.

Although this remark seemed to suggest he would not ask jurors to return a guilty verdict, Bingham has been challenging defense efforts to paint Dee Laney as a religious fanatic.

The prosecutor asked Bell, for example, if it was unusual that 15 Bibles were found in the Laney home. Bell said he has 25 or 30 Bibles himself. Moreover, Keith Laney testified that he attended church as often as his wife — usually several times a week.

Among the prosecution's other witnesses Tuesday was Sheila Spotswood, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Luke's body. She also attended the autopsy and another pathologist performed on Joshua's body.

Spotswood said Joshua was struck on the head with a large object at least eight times. Luke's skull was shattered with at least one major blow, she said.

Jurors showed no reaction to autopsy photos that upset many in Judge Cynthia Kent's courtroom.

Portions of the trial are being broadcast by Court TV.