The bullets that killed Kevin Kelly's estranged wife outside a Silver Spring church in February were not originally meant for her, according to the New Jersey man's defense lawyer.

Instead, they were meant for the lover Kelly believed Patricia Ann Simmons Kelly was seeing, said Silver Spring-based criminal defense attorney Greg Gerstenfield in his opening statements at Kelly's trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court on Monday.

"A man who sleeps with another man's wife must surely die," was the note Gerstenfield said Kelly had written before the morning of Feb. 22, when he allegedly traveled from his New Jersey home with a revolver to 52-year-old Simmons Kelly's Silver Spring church and confronted his estranged wife.

Kelly, 53, was charged with first-degree murder and use of a handgun in the commission of a violent crime in February after Simmons Kelly, of the 400 block of College Parkway in Rockville, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds outside her church, The People's Community Baptist Church on Norwood Road, in the middle of the service. He pleaded not guilty July 8 to the charges.

While Kelly admits he killed his wife, he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges because the killing was not pre-meditated, a key stipulation to the charge, Gerstenfield said in his opening statement to the jury.

Gerstenfield argued that Kelly should be found guilty of second-degree murder, which does not require pre-meditation. Second-degree murder has a maximum penalty of 30 years, while first-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to the Maryland Sentencing Guidelines handbook.

"Murder comes in several different flavors," Gerstenfield said.

But state prosecutor Jessica Hall argued in her opening statement that three days before the shooting, Simmons Kelly had asked her husband to leave their Rockville home. Their nine-year marriage was crumbling because Kelly had been out of work for a year, and Simmons Kelly, an attorney, was recently laid off from her law firm in Washington, D.C., Hall said. Kelly moved to New Jersey, his third marriage failing, Hall said.

When Kelly next saw his wife, he shot her, Hall said. He fired the gun five times, first shooting Simmons Kelly in her heart, then her abdomen, and after she fell face-down in the bushes in the church's parking lot, he fired three more times—pulling the trigger twice for every shot, Hall said.

"Mr. Kelly's life is out of control, and he blames it all on Pat," Hall told the jury.

That's not the case, said defense attorney Gerstenfield, who argued that Kelly shot his wife after she made a provocative statement while they argued in the church parking lot.

"Well, I can [have sex with] the whole congregation if I want to," Gerstenfield said Simmons Kelly told her husband.

"That's when he snapped," Gerstenfield said. "He pulled out his gun, and he shot his wife."

Eyewitnesses, most of whom were late for church and were walking or driving in the parking lot at the time of the confrontation, recalled in court Tuesday seeing a large man dressed in a black trench coat having a "regular conversation" with Simmons Kelly just outside the church entrance moments before the shooting.

In fact, Rockville resident Leslie Williams testified on Tuesday she was about to approach the two and ask the best way to enter the church when she saw the man "pull a gun out and just shoot her point blank."

"I didn't see it coming, because it was so matter-of-fact," Williams said.

After firing several shots, the man began wandering through the rows of cars in the packed parking lot, apparently not paying attention to anyone else until an off-duty police officer hired by the church ran over and ordered the man to drop to his knees and put his hands up, which he did, Williams said.

"He looked so calm, it appeared he could do anything," Williams said.

Wearing a black suit and white dress shirt with no tie, Kelly sat stoically Monday and Tuesday, his eyes fixed on the floor, occasionally glancing at the attorneys speaking in the courtroom.

Simmons Kelly's only brother, Arthur Simmons, was also in the courtroom with his wife, who left in tears as Hall described Simmons Kelly's death Monday.

Arthur Simmons described his brother-in-law as a "pretender," and said Kelly hadn't been faithful to his wife in years.

Kelly's argument that he killed his wife out of a split-second decision is moot, Arthur Simmons said after Monday's opening statements.

"You can't use jealousy as an excuse when you're a man, because it's too easy for men to move forward and go on," he said.

And Simmons Kelly's cousin Earnestine Simmons Gaines, a Washington, D.C., resident said she believes Kelly drove down to Silver Spring for the sole purpose of killing his wife.

"I know it was pre-meditated," she said outside the courtroom Tuesday. "Why would he follow her? Why would he come from New Jersey with a gun?"

Simmons Gaines said her cousin worked hard to put food on the table despite the economic strain her family was under. She worked overtime at her law firm when Kelly was laid off from his job.

But Kelly held suspicions that instead of working late to pay the bills, his wife was spending time with another man, Simmons Gaines said.

"Kevin had no reason to kill her," she said, wiping tears away. "I know he was unemployed, and tempers flared."

Like her cousin Arthur Simmons, Simmons Gaines said she wants to see Kelly put away for life.

"When Pat can get out of the grave, he can get out of prison," she said.

Arthur Simmons, an Atlanta resident who has taken custody of Simmons Kelly's 16-year-old daughter Iesha, said his family is looking for peace and justice for his sister's death.

"It's not shoes you want to be in," he said.