Katherine Wooley testifies for the state against her son, Jessy Roten. (Court TV)

CLEARWATER, Fla. (Court TV) —The jury deciding on the fate of Jessy Roten, an admitted skin head accused of killing a bi-racial girl, heard from Monday's witnesses how one disposed of evidence and the other sold the defendant the alleged murder weapon.

While most of the state's witnesses last week were police, prosecutors on Monday put Roten's friend, George Harvell, and his mother, Katherine Wooley, on the stand.

Roten, 19, is facing life in prison for the April 1999 slaying of his neighbor Ashley Mance. Prosecutors allege that Roten was motivated by hatred when he fired a single bullet at the home of Ashley's biracial family. The bullet traveled through an exterior wall before striking Ashley and her twin, Aleesha, and nicking their 4-year-old stepsister, Jailene Jones.

But while Harvell and Wooley both talked about Roten's involvement in the shooting and Roten's white supremacist beliefs, both witnesses maintained that the shooting wasn't motivated by hatred but that it was an accident committed by a lovesick teenager blowing off steam over a girl who didn't reciprocate his feelings.

Hours after the April 3, 1999 shooting occurred, Wooley said that she didn't know of her son's involvement in the crime which she had heard about on the news. She and her husband, Paul, had returned from K-Mart where they bought gardening supplies when they saw police investigators lurking on their property.

She soon received a call from Roten.

"I need you to go get my coat," she recounted for the jury.

When she asked why, he told her it was because of white supremacist patches on the jacket.

"He said, 'Just get rid of the jacket,'" Wooley testified.

Despite being "very scared," Wooley said that she found his jacket, put it inside a plastic bag along with clothes her husband was throwing out, and threw it in a trash can.

When police later found the jacket inside a dumpster, they found ammunition stuffed inside the pockets.

When pressed by prosecutor Lydia Wardell about what Roten told Wooley after the incident, Wooley tried to help win points for her son's defense.

"He said, 'Mom, I'm not a murderer,'" she said.

But Wardell cut her off, asking her not what Roten said as the cops were leading him away after his arrest, but since he confessed to the shooting.

According to Wooley, Roten said he went into the alley at 2:30 a.m., still angry over an argument he had with his girlfriend, Dana Molina.

"He did take his rifle into the alley, and as he walking down the alley, he would shoot it into the air," she said. "He told me he drank some vodka. The more he thought the angrier he was getting."

That's when Roten returned to the alley between his home and the Mance household.

"When he was trying to pull down the stock a last shot came out of the gun," she said.

During cross-examination, Wooley continued her efforts to bolster her son's claims that the incident was an accident.

Wooley tearfully agreed that her son never said the shooting was intentional, and nodded when asked by defense attorney Gregory Pond if Roten was "damned sorry" that it happened.

She also confirmed the defense's portrait of Roten as a deeply devoted boyfriend to a woman he was "having a hard time holding on to," attempting to give the jury an alternative to racial hatred as a motive behind the shootings.

Offering further insight into the relationship of Roten and his then-girlfriend was George Harvell, a friend of the defendant and fellow skinhead at the time of the shooting.

George Harvell (Court TV)

Harvell, testifying for the state, said that hours before the shooting he and Roten were among a group hanging out at the apartment of friend Todd Erbel. Roten and Molina had an argument, Molina left and when Erbel wouldn't tell Roten where she went, a fight broke out between the two men. Roten pulled a knife on Erbel, but the incident ended when the other men in the room jumped in between and Roten left, Harvell testified.

Roten believed that Erbel and "James," another friend present, were both interested in Molina, Harvell said, adding that Molina now lives with "James."

But Harvell's key testimony was about the semi-automatic rifle, since Harvell admits he sold the weapon to Roten for $300.

What the jury did not hear was how Harvell was already charged with illegally selling a gun to a minor, since Roten was only 17 at the time. His testimony comes a year after he pleaded guilty to the third-degree felony and was sentenced to 30 months' probation. He was also ordered not to associate with any hate groups or to be around any weapons during his probationary period.

Harvell also described Roten not as a gun-wielding hate-monger, but as someone who appeared uncomfortable and shaky with a gun during target practice.

"He wasn't the best marksman," he said. "He looked kind of goofy."

Harvell also testified that while he and Roten shared the same skinhead beliefs, he never knew Roten to be violent against minorities.

Testimony resumes in the afternoon.

—Rochelle Steinhaus