The cable TV executive accused of beheading his wife in Orchard Park last year now claims

he was the one humiliated and abused.

Through his new lawyer, Muzzammil S. "Mo" Hassan claimed Friday that he was a "battered

spouse" who was left emotionally out of control by the constant abuse his wife inflicted on

him.

Hassan's lawyer, Frank M. Bogulski, called the legal defense the first of its kind in the

country.

"The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship," Bogulski told a reporter

afterward. "He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him."

The allegations prompted an immediate rebuke from the prosecution.

"He chopped her head off," District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said of Hassan. "He

chopped her head off. That's all I have to say about Mr. Hassan's apparent defense that he was

a battered spouse."

Hassan, 45, is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 12 beheading of his wife,

Aasiya Zubair Hassan, 37. The Pakistani-born couple were best known for Bridges TV, the

station they formed in 2004 to counter negative Muslim stereotypes.

Nancy Sanders, a former news director at Bridges TV, expressed skepticism over the new abuse

claim. She noted that Hassan stood over 6 feet tall and "filled a doorway," while his

estranged wife was slender and several inches shorter.

"I never ever heard her disparage him in the workplace at all," Sanders told the Associated

Press. "It just did not seem to be in her nature. She was very gentle."

During Friday's court hearing, Hassan fired the attorney who represented him for nearly a

year and replaced him with a lawyer who promised "a revolutionary defense."

Bogulski told reporters he is "confident" he can get an acquittal for Hassan on an

unprecedented defense combining psychiatric elements and legal justification.

Homicide prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable, though, noted that Hassan was beheaded about a

week after she began formal divorce proceedings.

Gable won a motion to bar a psychiatric defense, but the judge told Bogulski he can seek to

reinstate a psychiatric defense later.

The judge also expressed concern about delays in starting the trial, now scheduled for

March.

Hassan, in one of his few public statements Friday, told the judge the delays stemmed from

now-resolved financial matters concerning his four children by three wives. Those cases were

resolved last month in Erie County Surrogate's Court, he said.

"There's been a lot of unnecessary delay," Hassan told the judge, adding that he and his

new lawyer hope to "expedite the process."

Though his old attorney, James P. Harrington, worked out the financial disputes to Hassan's

satisfaction, neither he, Hassan nor Bogulski would comment on the change in lawyers.

Bogulski said he has already begun interviewing psychiatric experts as part of his strategy

for using some form of a psychiatric defense. He stressed he also will use a justification

defense based on the claim that Hassan was "a battered" spouse verbally abused and humiliated

often by his wife.

Hassan has been jailed since he turned himself in to Orchard Park police about an hour

after his wife was beheaded in the office of their television station.