NEW YORK — Jurors have begun deliberating in the case of Peter Braunstein, a fashion writer accused of sexually abusing a former colleague in her New York apartment.

After listening to three weeks of testimony about conflicting medical opinions on Braunstein's mental state before, during and after the attack, a panel of seven men and five women began deliberating 16 counts against him, including kidnapping, arson and sex abuse.

A lawyer for Braunstein urged jurors on Tuesday to look into his "broken" brain to understand what he was thinking the night he disguised himself as a firefighter and held a woman captive in her home overnight.

"Peter Braunstein was undeniably mentally ill on Oct. 31, 2005," defense lawyer Robert Gottlieb told jurors during closing arguments Tuesday.

Braunstein, 43, faces 25 years to life if he is convicted of a Halloween 2005 sex attack on a former colleague at Fairchild Publications, where the defendant worked as a reporter for Women's Wear Daily until 2002.

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At issue, according to Gottlieb, is Braunstein's ability to form the "conscious objective" to commit the crimes.

Lawyers for Braunstein say the woman was a victim of his schizophrenic delusions. But district attorneys believe the attack was the deliberate act of a manipulative, arrogant and vengeful man obsessed with seeking revenge on those who had failed to recognize his self-described "genius."

"He was in his own bizarre world, totally separated from reality," Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb urged the jury to consider the testimony of forensic psychiatrist Barbara Kirwin, who said that Braunstein was a "textbook" example of a paranoid schizophrenic under a delusion of persecution so severe that it caused him to break from reality.

Prosecution and defense medical experts agree that Braunstein's departure from Women's Wear Daily and his break-up with W magazine editor Jane Larkworthy sparked a need for revenge that culminated in the attack.

During interviews with doctors and in journals he kept after the attack, Braunstein described the incident as a first step in a crime spree that would end with the murder of Vogue editor Anna Wintour — a "representative" of everything he despised in the fashion industry.

In his journals, he described a messianic view of the attack and his intent to kill himself before authorities could arrest him. Braunstein stabbed himself at least a dozen times in the neck before surrendering to University of Memphis campus police in December 2005.