Shooting victim Diane McIver told physicians working unsuccessfully to save her life that the bullet that struck her was fired by accident.

Fulton County prosecutors don't believe it. As jury selection in the murder trial of Diane McIver's husband, Atlanta attorney Claud “Tex” McIver, opens Monday, lead prosecutor Clint Rucker must convince the panel the former Fisher & Phillips partner had a motive to kill her and acted with “an abandoned and malignant heart” in taking her life.

Veteran criminal defense lawyers Bruce Harvey and Don Samuel of Atlanta's Garland, Samuel & Loeb are defending McIver, 75, after his longtime lawyer and personal friend Stephen Maples and a team led by former Fulton County Superior Court Judge William Hill at Polsinelli stepped down last fall.

Samuel told the Daily Report in December that he was “amazed at the lack of any evidence” to support murder charges against McIver, adding that prosecutors only hinted at possible motives.

McIver—a politically-connected Republican donor who has helped governors select judges and was a member of the state's Election Board—has acknowledged he shot his wife while a friend chauffeured them to their Atlanta home. His lawyers also said McIver passed a polygraph test showing it was an accidental shooting.

But conflicting statements made by McIver, his lawyers and his spokesmen about the circumstances; forensic anomalies; claims his wife had a new will; and McIver's alleged attempts to influence witnesses has propelled what at first appeared to warrant no more than a misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter charge into a murder trial.

But to win a murder conviction, Assistant District Attorney Clint Rucker must present the jury a convincing story as to why McIver would want to kill his wife, the president of billboard advertising company Corey Airport Services, and why he allegedly chose that particular moment in a car, on a public street, with a witness.

To advance a credible narrative—elements of which have already surfaced in pretrial hearings—Rucker will likely focus on McIver's behavior immediately after the shooting. He will also have to provide convincing answers to several open questions:

• Was McIver simply extraordinarily reckless with a gun he was holding in his lap while sitting in the back seat of the couple's SUV as his wife chatted up front with the driver? Or did he have an ulterior motive?
• When McIver called an attorney who successfully defended him against felony charges in a shooting years earlier to meet him at the hospital where Diane McIver died, was he behaving like a lawyer or a killer?
• Did he refuse to speak to police the night his wife died because he was too distraught, or was there another reason?
• If Diane McIver's death was not accidental, why did her husband do it in front of a witness? And what did he have to gain?
• And if his wife's death was an accident, why did his story about the circumstances keep changing?

The answers to those questions could determine whether McIver is found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and influencing witnesses or a lesser charge—or is ultimately is acquitted.

Here are some things to watch for as the trial unfolds:

A Missing Will as Motive?

Prosecutors intend to focus on whether the McIvers had a falling out over a new will, although no will has ever been found, despite multiple searches.

At a pretrial hearing, Atlanta attorney Harold Hudson testified that, after the McIvers executed separate wills in 2005 and 2006, they had a long-running disagreement over arrangements tied to the inheritance of their Putnam County farm. Hudson also said they drafted new codicils but did not know whether Diane McIver signed them.

Hudson said Diane McIver feared her husband's proposal for the farm's ownership would not prevent his children from his first marriage from gaining control of her financial interest in the property. Instead, she wanted the farm to go to her godson—the son of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall.

Black Lives Matter

Prosecutors have also zeroed in on contradictory statements made by McIver, his attorneys and spokesmen about the circumstances of his wife's death. Spokesman Bill Crane told the media McIver was holding a gun because he was alarmed by a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Atlanta.

After driver Dani Jo Carter exited the interstate to avoid a traffic jam, the trio found themselves in the heart of downtown Atlanta. McIver then asked his wife to hand him a gun he kept in the SUV console.

But news of apparent racial stereotyping by a wealthy white lawyer with a gun quickly prompted McIver's lawyer Stephen Maples to contradict Crane. Maples said was McIver was not concerned about Black Lives Matter, that McIver's was instead alarmed by street people he viewed as threatening.

Getting the Story Straight

That neighborhood was not where Diane McIver was shot. Instead, the gun discharged in an upscale neighborhood across from Atlanta's Piedmont Park. McIver, his spokesman and his lawyer offered differing explanations about that, too.

They first claimed McIver had the gun in his lap and was removing it from a bag when it fired.

Later, they claimed McIver fell asleep with the gun in his lap and that it went off when the SUV hit a bump. That version also changed after Carter told police the SUV was stopped at a light. McIver and his lawyers then said he was startled awake as the gun discharged.

Finally, they said McIver just doesn't remember.

Police and the Autopsy

Neither McIver nor Carter called police after the gun went off. Instead, McIver directed Carter to Emory University Hospital, although three other hospitals were far closer. When police showed up at the hospital, they talked to Carter but couldn't find McIver.

According to his lawyer, McIver was admitted to the hospital and medicated for an anxiety attack after his wife died. He didn't talk to police until three days later.

Diane McIver's autopsy offered yet another anomaly. The bullet that struck her traveled right to left, back to front and downward through her body, according to the autopsy. But, in questioning an Emory physician who treated her, Atlanta police Detective Darren Smith said the bullet's trajectory as it pierced the front passenger seat was “up slightly” as it traveled from back to front.

According to the autopsy, the bullet wound was “not irregular,” suggesting it “did not pass through an intermediate target,” such as the front seat, before striking her.

Carter told police the shooting was “a horrible accident.” She described the McIvers' relationship as “something to be envied.” She insisted Tex McIver was sleeping in back when she exited the interstate and that he woke up, looked around and warned them, “I think this is a bad idea, girls. This is a bad area.”

Peddling Influence?

Eventually, prosecutors charged McIver with attempting to unduly influence Carter, claiming he asked her to tell police she wasn't there when Diane McIver was shot. McIver was also charged with leaving a voicemail for Carter's husband implying she needed to stop talking to police, or McIver would go to jail.

Carter wasn't the only one McIver allegedly attempted to sway. The indictment charges him with instructing his original spokesman, Bill Crane, to retract statements McIver instructed him to make about the shooting.

Crane told the Daily Report that McIver asked him to retract references to Black Lives Matter. Crane said he told McIver the request “was impossible” because, “You can't put the genie back in the bottle. ”

At a hearing last year, prosecutors raised more questions about McIver's alleged attempts to secure favors from people he knew. When his godson's mother, the ex-wife of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall, visited him in jail, McIver asked her to contact her ex-husband to “make a phone call” that would get him out of jail.

In a motion filed Feb. 24, prosecutors leveled new allegations against McIver, seeking permission to introduce evidence to the jury of attempted bribery and obstruction. The motion claims McIver attempted to bribe a second spokesman McIver hired after the shooting .