MARTINEZ — After years of anticipation, the defense team of Jonathan Jackson revealed how it plans to attack DNA evidence linking Jackson to the scene of a brutal rape and beating of 81-year-old Sun Yi Kwon, who died six months later.

The theory, spelled out by attorney Evan Kuluk at the start of Jackson’s murder trial Friday morning, is that Jackson was heavily drunk and under the influence of LSD on Jan. 28, 2012, when he engaged in an impulsive act of necrophilia. He masturbated over the partially nude body of an elderly woman he believed was deceased, and also touched her inappropriately, Kuluk told jurors while his client bowed his head a few feet away.

Not only that, but Kuluk told the jury to expect Jackson to take the stand during his trial and confess to the shocking act, adding that Kwon had been sexually assaulted and attacked by an unknown assailant before Jackson happened upon her.

“He let his arousal get the best of him,” Kuluk told the jury, adding that it was a “dark point” in Jackson’s life and there was “no justification” for it.

Kwon was out on a morning walk on San Pablo Avenue, near the El Cerrito senior apartments where she lived, when she was attacked sometime before sunrise. Her attacker dragged her into a secluded tire lot, sexually assaulted her, beat her severely, leaving her for dead for several hours, until employees at the tire store discovered her.

Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Aron DeFerrari described it as a “savage attack,” one that went unsolved for years, until Jackson’s DNA was linked to the scene.

“He left (Kwon) slumped over a pile of used tires, like a piece of garbage,” DeFerrari said, using a projector to display a photo of Kwon as she appeared the morning of the attack. Jackson glanced at the photo and shook his head. Kwon’s family members seated in the courtroom gallery began to cry at the sight of it.

DeFerrari spent most of his statement to the jury focused not on the DNA evidence, but on Kwon’s physical state before and after the attack. Kwon survived the attack, spent weeks in an induced coma, but eventually was discharged from the hospital. She lingered at rehabilitation centers around the Bay Area, but died almost exactly six months after the attack.

Kwon was discovered to have a large tumor in her esophagus, and died of pneumonia, though a pathologist couldn’t rule out the attack as a contributing factor. Her official cause of death was listed as undetermined.

But DeFerrari told the jury that before the attack, Kwon was active, went on miles-long walks every day, took the bus around the Bay Area and didn’t require any assistance in living her day-to-day life. After the attack, DeFerrari said, she was “a shell of her former self” and “an invalid,” who could barely recognize her own children and was unable to eat or go to the bathroom without help.

“(Jackson) murdered her in January, but it took six months of suffering first,” DeFerrari said.

During his opening statement, Kuluk countered that Kwon had died of cancer, and that prosecutors brought in a third-party pathologist to parrot their theory, after the coroner failed to rule Kwon’s death a homicide.

“Whoever attacked and assaulted Ms. Kwon did not cause her death,” Kuluk said.

The defense theory

The night before Kwon was attacked, Kuluk said, Jackson went to his cousin’s home a short distance from the tire lot. They were “drinking heavily,” playing dominoes and went for a walk to get doughnuts, where Jackson somehow lost his phone.

When they returned to the house, “old rivalries came up,” Kuluk said, and Jackson got into a heated argument with his cousin. He left to clear his head and search for his phone, but by that point he was tripping on LSD, in addition to still being under the influence of alcohol.

That’s when he stumbled upon Kwon’s lifeless body in the tire lot, Kuluk said.

“He was quite surprised by what he saw. … She appeared to Mr. Jackson to already be dead,” Kuluk said. For some reason, “something clicked” in Jackson’s head and he became sexually aroused, Kuluk added.

Kuluk told the jury he knew necrophilia — sexual attraction to the deceased — was “way out of the mainstream,” but he said it is a “real human phenomenon.”

“What he did was not OK,” Kuluk said. “Mr. Jackson was full of guilt and shame.”

After Jackson finished masturbating, Kuluk said, Kwon either spoke or moved, causing Jackson to realize she was alive.

“He ran away,” at that point, Kuluk said.

Start of evidence

The first prosecution witness was Myung Sun Kwon, Sun Yi Kwon’s daughter, who was questioned about her mother’s physical state before and after the attack. Before, she was “very independent” and planned to travel to Hawaii days after she was assaulted, Myung Kwon said.

After, “she wasn’t the same … she’d say things that do not make sense,” Kwon said, adding that her mother used a wheelchair for the first time in her life.

When DeFerrari showed Kwon a picture of her mother on her deathbed, Kwon identified the photo but then began to sob uncontrollably. Judge Rebecca Hardie called a 20-minute recess.

Legal issues before trial

Jackson’s trial was held up for years because of an issue that came up during the process of charging him with murder. Jackson was indicted by a grand jury in 2016, after an arrest for possessing a stolen car caused his DNA to enter a statewide database. The DNA immediately was matched to sperm found at the scene of the attack.

Prosecutors took the case to a grand jury, and acquired an indictment on murder, kidnapping, rape and sexual penetration charges. But during the grand jury hearing, DeFerrari excused a grand juror who admitted to personal knowledge of the case. Because DeFerrari excused the juror, rather than allowing the juror to excuse themselves, courts ruled that the grand jury’s independence had been affected.

This led to the charges against Jackson being briefly dismissed and reinstated, but the case stalled for more than a year while appeals courts determined what the remedy should be. Eventually, the state Supreme Court ruled the indictment should not be thrown out and the case was allowed to proceed.