This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Testimony has begun in the trial of a southern Utah man accused of killing a 20-year-old woman in an attack that also left another woman dead.

The Spectrum newspaper of St. George reports that a man who survived a gunshot wound during the violence that night testified Tuesday about finding the beaten and stabbed body of Jerrica Christensen at a St. George townhome in 2010.

Brandon Perry Smith is charged with aggravated murder and aggravated assault. Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty, but dropped it a year ago so the case could move more quickly.

Smith's lawyers say their now 35-year-old client was manipulated by a friend, Paul Clifford Ashton, who was later convicted in the death of the second woman, 27-year-old Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden.

Ashton, 36, was sentenced in 2013 to life without the possibility of parole for killing Jerden.