KINGSTON - Prosecutors say Deputy William Birl Jones and his friend headed south of the river to serve a warrant.

Clifford Leon Houston's lawyers say they went to settle a score.

Prosecutors call the May 11, 2006, shootout that killed Jones and his ride-along partner Gerald Michael Brown an ambush.

The defense calls it an Old West-style shootout, with Houston and his brother, Rocky Joe Houston, on the receiving end.

"Who's ambushing whom?" lawyer Jim Logan asked a Roane County Circuit Court jury this morning in his opening statement in Leon Houston's murder trial.

He called the prosecution's argument "not only questionable but absurd."

Special prosecutor Gus Radford told the jury that Jones picked up his longtime friend Brown, a former police officer, regularly for ride-alongs.

They went to Leon Houston's house to serve a warrant on an aggravated assault charge against Rocky House after getting a tip from an off-duty deputy that he was there.

"It was Deputy Jones' job to serve warrants," Radford said.

"Deputy Jones was killed for trying to do his job. Mike Brown was killed simply because he was his friend."

Radford painted a portrait of two men ambushed with a hail of bullets as they drove peacefully onto Houston's property in the Ten Mile community.

Jones died after being struck by at least 18 bullets, prosecutors said. Even more rounds hit Brown, including a shot that paralyzed him instantly and four more that struck him in the head, Radford said.

"He was helplessly lying there on the ground," Radford said. "While he is there, he is shot four times in the head."

Logan said the pair rolled up toward the house in Jones' cruiser, with Brown leaning over Jones to shoot.

Brown's mother and Jones' sister were the first witnesses to testify today. More than 100 witnesses are expected to testify in the first of the brother's trials.

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