PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh-area Republican state Sen. Jane Orie testified today that she spent roughly 10 years as a prosecutor before becoming a state lawmaker and was intimately familiar with document examination in that role.

Orie’s testimony in her campaign corruption retrial was meant to set the table for a defense argument that she couldn’t or wouldn’t have committed the crude document forgeries from the first trial that were attributed to her by Allegheny County prosecutors. She’s expected to testify through this afternoon before being cross-examined Tuesday.

Orie is accused of misusing her state-funded staff to do political campaign work benefiting herself and sister Joan Orie Melvin, a state Supreme Court justice who isn’t charged.

Orie went on trial on those charges last year but that case ended in a mistrial over the forged documents, resulting in the new trial with additional charges of perjury and forgery.

Her early testimony today didn’t deal specifically with any of the forgeries or any of the perjury charges that stem from statements she made at the last trial denying that she set up a campaign office across the street from her legislative office in late 2005 or early 2006.

Prosecutors contend that Orie set up that office as a sham because another Republican state legislator, former U.S. Rep. Jeff Habay, was convicted in 2005 for doing precisely what Orie is now accused of doing.