Susan Spencer (48 Hours correspondent)

Now the close-knit family that once counted Mindy among its own will face off against her in court, convinced that this was murder, pure and simple.

Do you believe that she actually sat down and planned it ahead of time?

Oh, sure.

Hold the court doors on two.

That's clear.

All rise.

It's day one of Mindy Barani's murder trial in Lima, Ohio.

And her lawyer is feeling the pressure.

But 20-year-old Mindy faces life in prison, unless a jury believes her risky defense, that she was a battered child.

Sleep last night?

Battered not just physically, but emotionally.

Battered until at 16, she had no choice but to kill her father, Andy.

If I had said, Dad, I need your help, I'm pregnant, he would have killed me or he would have beaten me very badly that day.

So you think you did the only thing?

Yes.

Andy's family and his second wife, Joni, hope the jury will see Mindy as they now do, as a calculating killer with a story concocted to get away with murder.

Before the trial begins, Mindy and her main ally, her mother Shirley, meet in a private back room.

State prosecutor Joseph Burkhardt.

Mindy's story, he says, is pure fabrication.

She planned this murder, he insists, from the moment she broke into Andy's bedroom to steal the gun.