Eric Thompson, accused of fatally shooting his wife’s ex-lover Jon Tokuhara three years ago, is being portrayed by the state as a controlling husband in his second murder trial — the first ending in a hung jury Aug. 9, 2023.

The affair was “symbolic of something deeper,” Deputy Prosecutor Benjamin Rose said Tuesday in his opening statement. “It represented a loss of control over Joyce. He liked controlling his wife as he did in everything in his life.”

Rose says a postnuptial agreement Thompson had his wife sign days before the Jan. 12, 2022, shooting was meant to keep her silent about the murder.

Joyce Thompson sat in the gallery directly behind her husband, wearing a cream sweater top and beige pants, mirroring his cream-fitted dress shirt and beige trousers. She has chosen not to testify at trial.

The trial is being held again in Judge Paul Wong’s courtroom. The courtroom gallery was filled with both Tokuhara and Thompson friends and family.

The Thompsons, who met in their high school Spanish class, were inseparable, and “their identities became one,” according to Eric Thompson’s words, Rose said. He was in control of their 2017 wedding, including having their wedding photos posted in MidWeek, and throughout the marriage he was in charge.

“The affair was Joyce’s choice to get out of it,” the deputy prosecutor said.

Thompson, a contractor, had returned July 2021 from a Big Island work trip and discovered on his home’s surveillance video his wife leaving at 2 a.m. with Tokuhara from their East Honolulu home.

When confronted, she confessed and spent the night at her parents’ home. When she returned the next day, “as part of his controlling behavior, he has Joyce call her parents and confess to them,” the deputy prosecutor said.

She subsequently ended the affair.

The couple had had problems conceiving a child, so they sought out Tokuhara at the advice of Joyce Thompson’s high school teacher, who maintained a friendship with her student, and had also been seeing an acupuncturist.

Joyce Thompson delivered a daughter in June 2020, but she continued to see Tokuhara.

In May 2021 they started having intimate relations, “but it was not just sexual,” Rose said. “It was romantic, with 5,600 messages on Instagram found on Tokuhara’s phone.”

Rose said Thompson murdered Tokuhara out of revenge but didn’t do so immediately upon learning of the affair. Instead, “he bided his time. He waited. That’s how he wants to show the world that everything is perfect,” with a beautiful family and home.

In September, Thompson discovered his wife was still talking to Tokuhara, Rose said. He yelled and swore at Joyce Tokuhara’s teacher, who he suspected had something to do with it.

He made Joyce Thompson sign a post-marital agreement dated Dec. 29, 2021, which says in the event they divorce, Eric Thompson keeps the baby and their house.

Rose said by doing so, “Joyce remains silent for what he’s about to do. He holds this over her,” which is “part of his controlling behavior.”

“The documents are used to subjugate her to whatever he wants,” and he had her sign the Dec. 29, 2021, documents at the start of January 2022, Rose said, days before the shooting. “There is no end date.”

On the day of the shooting, Tokuhara saw the high school teacher, ending her appointment at 5:38 p.m.

Thompson left his house at 5:30 p.m. and headed to Tokuhara’s acupuncture clinic driving his white Chevy Silverado.

At 6:12 p.m., video surveillance shows a man with the same build and same walk as Thompson, wearing a face mask, tan bucket hat, sunglasses and a jacket with long sleeves covering his hands. He is seen walking deliberately and slowly crossing Waipahu Depot Street toward the acupuncturist’s office.

“He shot him four times to the face,” Rose said.

While walking across the street, the bucket hat fell to the ground, but he briskly continued walking.

That hat was tested by a lab called Cybergenetics, which uses newer technology than what Honolulu ­police initially used, which found that there is an extremely high probability that the DNA from the hat belongs to Thompson.

A backpack with $4,000 in it was not taken from the office, indicating that this was not a robbery.

Police recovered .22-­caliber shell casings fired from a .22-caliber firearm.

Thompson disguised his truck by earlier removing a silver lockbox in the bed of the truck, Rose said.

Thompson has .22-caliber firearms, he said.

Also, a fire at Thompson’s house was used to burn evidence, Rose said.

“Eric Thompson planned this murder and executed the murder nearly flawlessly,” he said.

Nelson Goo was retained by Thompson in place of his former lawyer David Hayakawa, who was appointed a state District Court judge. Goo opened by saying Thompson is one of four children raised by a single mother, a social worker.

Goo said Joyce had her own business called Little Squeeze Me, and Eric had no control over her.

Eric Thompson never contacted, threatened or visited Tokuhara in the six months after learning of the affair.

He said there is video that shows him removing the truck lockbox on Jan. 11, 2022, because he was going to the Waimanalo Transfer Station to dump 300 pounds of bricks.

Goo discounts the controlling allegation, although there were tense moments when Joyce’s siblings were not able to see their niece, but later photos show they did.

He claims it was Joyce’s idea to do a postnuptial, and there were two versions, one with Joyce as petitioner and the other with Eric, but neither was signed.

Goo also pointed to a number of possible suspects, naming an ex-­boyfriend of Tokuhara’s girlfriend, the ex-husband of a woman he had a relationship with and a few “betrayed women.”

He also suggests the area is crime-ridden, with a game room nearby, a homeless encampment, drug addicts and a bar.

Goo asked Lilly Tokuhara, who took the stand, if she knew whether her son Jon was a gambler. He suggested that the $4,000 found in the office was gambling-related. She said she did not.

She testified that she found him lifeless on the floor when she went to his office the next morning when he failed to show up to her house to pick up dinner she made or respond to texts and calls the night before.

Goo attacked the DNA lab’s marketing strategy, which he said offers analysis with high numbers but not for use in any judicial proceedings unless it is paid for a final report.