A Fulton County jury saw Kathryn Johnston today shortly after seeing an Atlanta police officer accused of playing a role in her death.

Prosecutor Kellie Hill put the photograph of the 92-year-old woman on a monitor as the trial in Superior Court began.

Then a steady BANG, BANG, BANG ... rang out from a recorder, eventually reaching the number 39.

"That was 39 shots, the last thing Kathryn Johnston heard," Hill quietly told the jury before testimony started. " She died in the sanctity of her home."

Hill looked at Officer Arthur Tesler, seated at the defense table.

"The evidence will show that the defendant never fired his weapon. But the evidence will also show that his actions led to the death of Mrs. Johnston."

Hill told jurors during opening statements that this was a case about "drugs, deceit, death and disgrace." Tesler is charged with violating his oath of office, lying in an official investigation and false imprisonment.

Narcotics investigators lied to a judge to get a no-knock search warrant for Johnston's home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta after a drug dealer they had arrested told them that there was a kilo of cocaine in the house. The police officers told the judge they had bought drugs at the house.

The officers planted drugs in the basement of the house once they realized they had been misled and had killed an innocent woman.

A majority white jury will decide a case in which Tesler and two other officers accused in the case are white and Johnston was black. The case has fueled outrage and suspicion in the African-American community, and politicians and political organizers monitored the trial this morning.

State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), organizer Michael Langford, state Rep. Mabel "Able Mabel" Thomas and Markel Hutchins, a neighborhood organizer, who spearheaded protests over Johnston's case, sat in the court pews. Hutchins and Thomas have announced their candidacy to replace U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Atlanta).

William McKenney, Tesler's defense lawyer, told jurors that Atlantans had every reason to be suspicious of the police. McKenney described a department in which lying to get search warrants and planting drugs were routine practices and fueled by arrest quotas demanded of the narcotics units— nine arrests a months and two search warrants per officer.

Tesler, a relatively new investigator and six-year veteran of the force, was not a part of the lies told to secure the warrant and was set up by his more experienced former partners, Gregg Junnier and J.R. Smith, McKenney said.

Both Smith and Junnier, who were facing the possibility of life in prison for Johnston's death, have entered into plea bargains and are expected to testify against Tesler.

"These were senior officers who were instructing the rookie," McKenney told jurors. "You will learn that 'insurance drugs' were kept by Junnier and Smith, basically throw-downs. If they searched a house and they didn't find drugs, they would plant drugs."

Tesler spotted Smith planting marijuana in Johnston's basement, McKenney said.

"At this point, his fate was sealed," McKenney said. "They need to get Tesler deeply involved because he is the weakest link in the chain."

The lawyer implied that the veteran investigators considered Tesler a questionable ally because he had once reported a fellow officer for making racial epithets during an arrest. Instead of being commended by his superiors for making the complaint, Tesler was transferred to the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, one of the least desired assignments, McKenney said.