TIONESTA, Forest County — Jury selection was to begin today in the trial of a Butler County woman accused of gunning down her husband last year at the couple’s camp in Tionesta Township.

Opening statements and testimony in Ruth Maxine Angert’s trial, however, are not to begin until Feb. 20.

Angert, 59, of Clearfield Township in May pleaded guilty to charges of attempted aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 68-year-old Larry Angert.

But a month later, a Forest County judge allowed her to withdraw the plea, setting the stage for the trial on homicide and other lesser charges.

State police said Angert shot her husband of six years with his own .38-caliber revolver during an argument Nov. 17, 2012, at their camp on Tubbs Lane.

The defendant told investigators that Larry Angert pushed her to the floor and grabbed her neck. She claimed she grabbed the revolver and that it fired, hitting her husband in the cheek as they struggled for the gun.

Forest County District Attorney Elizabeth Ziegler said she has made no decision on what levels of homicide Angert would face at trial. The defendant is charged with an open count of homicide.

An open count of homicide includes first-, second- and third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.

The trial is not a capital case, meaning Angert, if convicted of the top count of first-degree murder, faces life in prison without parole — not the death penalty.

Ziegler declined to discuss her trial strategy and would not say if she plans to present a motive to the jurors.

The prosecution plans to call between 12 and 15 witnesses, “mostly at the forensic end of (the case),” Ziegler said.

She said the trial before Judge Gregory Hammond is expected to take only two days.

Angert’s attorney, public defender Todd Woodin, has refused any comment about the case.

However, court papers showed that Woodin in August hired an expert on so-called “battered spouse syndrome” as part of his defense case.

“I don’t know if that’s the direction (the defense) is going,” said Ziegler, noting she has not received the expert’s evaluation of the defendant.

Angert remains in the Warren County Jail without bail.