Ethan Mallove, son of homicide victim Eugene Mallove, is hoping for a better outcome at the murder trial of Mozzelle Brown.

The 35-year-old software engineer from Winchester, Mass., was outraged two years ago when the state offered Brown’s co-defendant, Chad M. Schaffer, a mid-trial plea deal involving a 16-year prison sentence. Ethan Mallove testified at Brown’s trial Wednesday and spoke to reporters afterward, saying, “I think there’s a strong case. I would like to see (the case) go to the jury this time.”

He admitted he is something of an “armchair prosecutor” and that the state’s attorneys who are trying the case know juries better than he does. Asked if anything would make things right for Mallove’s survivors, he said nothing can be restored or repaired but that a message can be sent.

“I think punishment should be symbolic,” he said. “That we don’t stand for this type of violence, this type of savagery. We have laws.”

Brown is accused of taking part in the brutal beating death of Eugene Mallove, a 56-year-old scientist from Pembroke, N.H., at Mallove’s childhood home in Norwich on May 14, 2004. He and Schaffer allegedly went to the home, which Mallove was cleaning out after evicting Schaffer’s parents, and attacked Mallove. The state alleges the two men left the critically injured Mallove lying on the ground and returned later with Schaffer’s girlfriend, Candace Foster, and forced her to partake in the continued beating as Mallove pleaded for help.

Foster, who also is charged in Mallove’s murder, is awaiting trial and cooperating with the state. Prosecutor Paul J. Narducci said he expects to call Foster to the witness stand on Friday. It is unclear whether the state will be able to elicit testimony from Schaffer, who is appealing his sentence.

Watching with his wife, Cheryl, Wednesday as Narducci and prosecutor Thomas M. DeLillo continued to set the scene for the jury on the second day of the trial, Ethan Mallove said he thinks about the crime every day and that he wants the public to remember it occurred.

“It’s nice to finally have our day in court,” he said.

On the witness stand, the son testified that he was attending the University of New Hampshire in May 2004 and that the last time he saw his father was in April 2004, when he and his wife had dinner with Eugene and Joanne Mallove. He identified his father and Eugene Mallove’s Dodge Caravan minivan in several photos that were placed into the record and recalled how, after his father was killed, he sent police literature on the camera his father owned to help them identify it if it turned up at a pawn shop.

Ethan Mallove also ran down his father's professional credentials. Eugene Mallove, a physicist with an interest in alternative energy, particularly cold fusion, had founded his own magazine, Infinite Energy, in 1995. The magazine is still published. He had received his bachelor’s and master's degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in environmental science from Harvard University.

On Wednesday the prosecution also elicited testimony from Patricia Davis, who said she saw a black man wearing a baseball cap relieving himself on the Mallove property as she left her job at the Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores in the adjacent shopping plaza at about 9:45 p.m. on the night of the homicide. Davis said that as she waited to pull out onto Salem Turnpike, she saw a green car with white lettering — presumably Mallove’s van, which was later located in a Foxwoods Resort Casino employee parking lot. She said the same man she had seen was in the car, with another man, as it pulled up behind her and followed her onto Interstate 395.

Under cross-examination by Brown’s attorney, Richard C. Marquette, Davis admitted she didn’t mention passengers in the van when she put the incident in writing nine days after the homicide.

Uncasville construction company owner James Michalski testified that he was driving by the property just before dark when he noticed a light-skinned black man with straightened hair and a disheveled-looking white woman with medium-length dark hair standing next to a dumpster in the Mallove driveway.

Retired Detective Edward Gookin from the state police Eastern District Major Crime Squad narrated a video of the crime scene taken by the squad, which had processed the scene for the Norwich Police Department. The videographer captured close-up photographs of Mallove’s body and battered face, pools of blood and various items found at the scene, including a keychain that would later be identified as Schaffer’s. The video also shows the inside of the home, from the basement to the attic, as well as the garage.

Gookin will resume the witness stand when the trial continues today.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN