GRAND FALLS-WINDSOR, N.L. - The defence lawyer for a U.S. woman is raising questions about how the lead RCMP officer investigated the shooting death of her husband on a hunting trip in central Newfoundland.

Mary Beth Harshbarger of Pennsylvania is being tried on a count of criminal negligence causing death.

The 45-year-old woman has said she shot her husband Mark on Sept. 14, 2006, during a hunting trip after mistaking him for a bear.

Karl Inder asked Cpl. Doug Hewitt on Thursday whether another officer who re-enacted the victim's movements one year later was wearing orange safety gear, which Mark Harshbarger wasn't wearing when he was shot.

Hewitt said that would have defeated the purpose but conceded there could have been hunters in the area at the time.

Inder raised the prospect that Hewitt himself could have been accused of criminal negligence if his officer had been shot.

Inder also asked Hewitt whether the decision to charge the accused was motivated by pressure from her family and media interest in the case.

Justice Richard LeBlanc, who is hearing the judge-alone trial in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, declared that line of questioning irrelevant.

But Hewitt agreed that RCMP officers initially considered Harshbarger's death to be an accident.

In an email to the accused dated Nov. 22, 2006, Hewitt referred to how Mark Harshbarger's family was "stirring a commotion" and the importance of ensuring his death was accidental.

Inder referred Hewitt to his own update reports on the case, including one dated Oct. 18, 2007, 13 months after the killing.

Hewitt agreed that he wrote that the evidence gathered by police at the scene and during two re-enactments -- two days after the shooting and one a year later -- was "more indicative of an accident."

Inder also cited another report in which Hewitt wrote: "This matter deals with an American citizen taking the life of another American citizen."

The case had generated "an enormous amount of media attention," he wrote.

Inder asked Hewitt whether he felt pressured to lay a criminal charge. "Did you feel like you had to do something?"

The RCMP officer replied: "I felt that a man had died and that should be pursued."

Hewitt said in the months after the shooting, the RCMP was "getting volumes of information from U.S. authorities" that led him and another officer to interview several people in Pennsylvania in September 2007.

Under cross-examination, Hewitt said the trip was to follow up on another charge, not the one for which the accused is now being tried. He did not elaborate.

The RCMP issued a warrant for Harshbarger's arrest on April 30, 2008. She was brought to Newfoundland last May after losing a two-year extradition fight.

Hewitt is among three re-enactment witnesses since the trial started Monday to say it was too dark at the time of the shooting, about 7:55 p.m., to identify her target.

She was positioned with her rifle about 60 metres from where her husband emerged from the woods.

Hewitt said all he could see through her rifle scope during a re-enactment of her husband's last movements was "a black mass."

If convicted, Harshbarger faces a penalty of four years to a life term in prison.

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