Even before they said "I do," Jennifer Dalton said there was trouble in the marriage that ended when she shot and killed her husband in the garage of her Elk Grove home.

He lied to her about having a previous marriage, she testified Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court. He lied to her about owning a home, she said. He even lied about his smoking, Dalton testified.

Then her dog died, her pay was cut twice during the recent recession and she feared her home was about to go into foreclosure – none of which really came into play, Dalton said, when she gunned Craig Dalton down just after 2 p.m. on the afternoon of July 13, 2009.

Testifying in her own defense, Jennifer Dalton, now 42, told jurors the killing resulted from a surprise visit from her estranged 39-year-old husband. She said she also was afraid he meant to maybe kill her.

She said she was home alone, working the computer in search of a new job, when she heard a noise in the garage of her residence on Rainbow Falls Way.

"I was scared, so I went and got my protection out of the closet," Dalton said of the wooden-grip handgun her father had given her long ago.

She said she opened the door leading into the garage when she came face-to-face with Craig Dalton. She said he greeted her the way he always did when he wanted sex:

"He told me I needed to prove I hadn't been with another man," Dalton testified, under questioning from her defense lawyer, Linda Parisi.

The next thing she knew, he slammed her into a wall and spit in her face, Dalton said.

"He was enraged at me, calling me a whore," she said. "He said that he could kill me. I was terrified."

Dalton said she couldn't recall the exact details leading up to her pulling the trigger.

She shot him, she said, because "I was scared to death."

Dalton is accused of second-degree murder in a retrial. During her first courtroom encounter earlier this year, a jury acquitted her May 9 of first-degree murder with the special circumstance allegation of lying in wait. The same panel failed to reach a verdict on the lesser-included second-degree murder charge.

In his cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore suggested Dalton's testimony differed from what she said in the first trial. In that go-round, she testified "I don't know" why she shot Craig Dalton.

Dalton said she now believes it was an act of self-defense.

Ore's questioning sought to establish a groundwork of malice.

Jennifer Dalton agreed her husband posted nude pictures of her on the Internet, told her about his sexual encounters with other women, declared himself single on a Yahoo Web page and spent money on what she called "irresponsible" things like a new BMW and a trip to Belize.

All of those actions told her that her husband wasn't truly committed to making their marriage work, Jennifer Dalton said.

"It hurt me," she responded.

Dalton refused to give in to Ore's suggestion that the behavior made her angry.

"I can't say I'm mad," she testified.

Dalton is expected to continue her testimony today in front of Judge Helena R. Gweon.

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