Trial is under way for man in killing

Despite charges being dropped, Biswanath Halder faces 202 felony counts.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A former student tried to kill as many people as he could in a seven-hour shooting rampage at Case Western Reserve University that he had planned for more than a year, prosecutors said Monday as his trial began.
One person died in the siege on the university's business school, which the prosecution says Biswanath Halder attacked because he thought a student computer lab employee had hacked into a Web site he designed to provide business assistance to his native India.
Halder, 65, who graduated from the school in 1999 with a master's degree in business administration, has repeatedly said information he considered vital to his life's work was destroyed.
"This case is about two things, arrogance and selfishness," Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Rick Bell told the jury in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.
Defense lawyer Kevin Cafferkey apologized to the family of 30-year-old Norman Wallace, a graduate student from Youngstown who was shot and killed, and to everyone who was inside the building at the university's Weatherhead School of Management on May 9, 2003. Halder believed he was "sacrificing himself to save mankind" from someone he was convinced was a cybercriminal, Cafferkey said.
About the terrorism charge
Halder is charged with 202 felony counts, including aggravated murder and terrorism. Halder had been accused of 338 felony charges, but more than 100 were dropped because some witnesses to the shooting spree were unavailable. If convicted, Halder could be sentenced to death.
His indictment on a charge of terrorism was the result of a law Ohio adopted to strengthen its ability to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
On a clear spring day, just after finals had ended, Halder smashed through a glass door at the Peter B. Lewis Building using a mallet, then put on a helmet and fired on students and faculty, Bell said. He was carrying more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
The first person the shooter saw was Wallace, who was killed by a single shot to the heart with a hollow-point bullet designed to open once it enters the body, Bell said. Two other people were injured.
Wallace was a promising student. He was president of the university's Black MBA Student Association and planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him.
"You will see him struggle for life," Bell said of surveillance video that will be presented as evidence.
Halder bought a firearm more than a year before the shooting, Bell said, and told neighbors that he was going to make the university pay, saying, "I'll kill them all."
Halder, wearing a black hairpiece that he requested for the trial, took notes and talked to his attorneys throughout Bell's opening statement.
In a blow to the defense, Judge Peggy Foley Jones ruled Monday that Halder's attorneys may not argue that he is mentally ill.
Suspect's troubles
Instead, Cafferkey told jurors that Halder became obsessed with cybercrime after his Web site was hacked into. Cafferkey read a disparaging message posted on the site in 2001: "Bizzy Halder is a moron. This guy makes a living out of creeping people out from his fake hair to his fake teeth."
Halder blamed university employee Shawn Miller for writing the message and deleting the information. Halder filed a lawsuit against Miller in 2001, which a judge dismissed.
Halder also contacted police and wrote congressmen seeking help, but found no recourse. He blamed Case Western for protecting Miller and sought to attack the university's power structure, Cafferkey said.
"That's what he went in there for, to save mankind," he said.
Miller, who Halder referred to as an "evil man," testified Monday that he did not post the message or tamper with Halder's site.
Miller supervised the computer lab that Halder used and said the former student was difficult to deal with, sometimes logging onto three computers at the same time then leaving for hours.
"He was notorious," Miller said.
Miller thought he heard a table drop the day of the shooting. He called security at the request of another employee, then saw a man in a wig and military jacket holding a firearm at the end of the computer lab's lower-level hallway.
"He started to raise it and we all ran," Miller said. "We scattered. It was panic."