A jury trial that began Monday involves stolen trash, a backpack full of sex toys and allegations of evidence tampering.

That’s not to mention claims of multiple personalities, stalking allegations and a naked home video filmed under the bed covers.

At center stage is defendant Dale E. McCormick, a critic of Lawrence police, who’s representing himself in court against charges that he burglarized a Lawrence woman’s home early Feb. 16, 2003, and held her against her will.

Prosecutors allege McCormick, 32, broke in through the woman’s window in the 1300 block of New Hampshire Street, pinned her on her bed, refused to let her leave and begged her to be in a relationship with him. Prosecutor Jacqueline Spradling told jurors the case came down to a simple fact: McCormick was in love with the woman, whom he met in 1997 in a chemistry class at Washburn University, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“This is a case about obsession,” said Spradling, a special assistant district attorney from Johnson County.

McCormick, however, told jurors the woman had been making false police reports about him for years, and he said he thought she had two personalities. One considers McCormick an intimate friend; the other is hostile and fabricates charges against him, he said.

McCormick’s version is that on the night in question, the woman called him, invited him to her home, let him in, talked with him for hours, then grew agitated and slammed the door as he left.

McCormick said that when police arrested him, he offered to show them that phone records would prove she’d called him. But he claims officers weren’t willing to listen because he’s known in Lawrence for videotaping police while cursing at them, a practice he describes as constitutional activism.

“They didn’t want to find any evidence to prove I was innocent,” McCormick said. “These guys hate me.”

McCormick also alleged police fabricated scrape marks on the woman’s window, and he told jurors the evidence would back him up.

He admitted stealing her journal from her trash, an activity that’s within the law, to investigate what he said were her false police reports. He also said he regularly went through trash outside the homes of local police, prosecutors and judges in an effort to expose corruption.

Spradling showed jurors a timeline that she said documented the woman’s attempts to get McCormick to stop contacting her. One artifact of McCormick’s obsession, she said, is a home video sent to her in which he climbs into bed naked and films himself talking to her under his covers.

Police found an assortment of sexual bondage toys in a backpack McCormick was carrying the morning of the alleged burglary. McCormick didn’t go into detail Monday about why he had the items but told jurors there was a good reason.

“It wasn’t because I’m demented,” he said.

McCormick is serving as his own attorney but has two salaried members of the state’s death-penalty defense team as standby counsel. Judge Michael Malone appointed them, to the surprise of Lawrence Police officers, after he had difficulty finding a qualified local attorney who wouldn’t have a conflict of interest.

The trial continues today.