WASHINGTON -- Francisco Martin Duran, the Colorado man accused of trying to assassinate President Bill Clinton, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and had no intention of killing the president when he opened fire on the White House in October, his attorney told a federal jury at the beginning of Duran's trial.


Public defender A.J. Kramer said "something snapped" in Duran's mind after he dropped off his wife at work and his young son at day care on Sept. 30 in suburban Colorado Springs. Hearing voices and suffering from delusions, Duran left Colorado that day and headed to Washington, where he intended to shoot only at the White House, "a powerful symbol" of government, Kramer said.


"I can't stand here and tell you that what Mr. Duran did was O.K.," Kramer said in his opening statement to the U.S. District Court jury in Washington. "What he was doing was firing at the White House as a symbol of a lot of things going on inside of Frank Duran ... He was not firing at anyone. He was not trying to hurt anyone, except maybe trying to kill himself."


On Oct. 29, Duran, 26, an upholsterer at a Colorado resort, sprayed the White House grounds with gunfire from a semiautomatic rifle. As he attempted to reload the weapon, he was tackled by tourists and subdued by Secret Service agents.


Kramer and assistant public defender Leigh Kenny have said they will decide after the government presents its case whether to use an insanity defense.


But prosecutor Eric Dubelier sees Duran differently. He described Duran as an anarchist who hated Clinton and who told friends he wanted to kill the president.


"Mr. Duran was very vehement and angry about many things," Dubelier said. "One of them was the government. He hated the U.S. government. He hated the president of the United States."


The government also intends to argue that Duran had a target on the White House lawn: a New York businessman who resembles Clinton.