Her hearing got under way shortly after 10 after DeLeon had disposed of two other cases. Indications were that it would take several hours, with the prosecution having scheduled almost a dozen witnesses.
Melanie Gaye Cook, 29, who became an assistant attorney general last September after working five years as a Philadelphia assistant district attorney, was presenting the state's case. She was assigned by Attorney General Ernest Preate.
Representing Friedman is Dennis J. Cogan, 43, who prosecuted about 60 murder cases as an assistant DA before entering private practice in 1975. He has handled about 40 murder cases since then.
Friedman, 24, a second-year Temple University Law School student, is charged with homicide, arson, possession of an instrument of crime and risking a catastrophe in the Nov. 26 slaying of Bryan Edwards, 28, her boyfriend of three years.
Police said Friedman shot Edwards because he was leaving her for his estranged wife despite Friedman's "extraordinary" efforts to keep him. Those efforts included suicide threats, false police reports and firebombing Edwards' car 13 days before the killing, police said.
The first testimony today concerned the alleged firebombing.
Friedman, daughter of a Los Angeles insurance executive, told detectives she shot Edwards with her newly purchased .38-caliber handgun after the victim forced her into engaging in oral sex and began threatening her with a knife.
The shooting occurred while both Friedman and Edwards were naked in the bed of the Spring Garden apartment they had shared for two years before Edwards moved out last fall, according to police.
Friedman was arrested on Jan. 12, arraigned and released on $200,000 bail. She entered a psychiatric hospital about two weeks after the slaying.
Preate's office took over the case in December at the request of District Attorney Ronald D. Castille, who cited potential conflicts of interest.
Friedman was a student intern in Castille's domestic violence unit at the time of the slaying, and two assistant district attorneys from that unit are potential witnesses.
Assistant Attorney General Cook graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1981 from the University of Southern California and received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. She prosecuted felony and misdemeanor assaults, theft, drug, burglary, robbery and kidnapping cases as an assistant DA before joining the AG's office last September.
Cogan graduated from Temple's undergraduate and law schools. After his admission to the bar in 1971, he worked as an assistant DA for about four years - mostly in the DA's homicide unit, where he prosecuted an estimated 60 murder cases.
