SOMERVILLE, N.J. — When a blast of pellets from Jayson Williams' shotgun killed a chauffeur in the former NBA star's mansion, was it a tragic accident or a crime?

Prosecutors and defense lawyers battled over that question Monday during five hours of often-heated summations that capped the retired athlete's 12-week manslaughter case.

Attorneys for the one-time All-Star urged panelists to acquit him of all charges in the death of driver Costas "Gus" Christofi, telling the jury that "out of control" prosecutors had concealed evidence and coached witnesses in a desperate bid to paint the unintentional killing as a crime.

"Try as they might, they cannot turn this into a crime. It was an accident," defense lawyer Billy Martin told them, adding, "Don't buy the hype."

Prosecutors insisted they had done nothing wrong and said that Williams forfeited any claim of an accident when he toyed with the loaded 12-gauge in a room full of houseguests.

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"When you play with deadly weapons, accident is no defense," said lead prosecutor Steven Lember.

Defense attorney Joseph Hayden called prosecutors "out of control."

Jurors, who had seemed weary and bored in the final days of testimony, appeared riveted by the arguments. The panelists watched the attorneys intently, only breaking their gazes to stare at Williams at the defense table or to the gallery where the victim's sister cried softly.

On Tuesday morning, the panel will receive final instructions on the law from Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman. The judge will then randomly choose three alternates from the 11 women and four men and send the remainder to the jury room to deliberate.

If the jurors convict Williams, 36, of aggravated manslaughter and seven other charges stemming from the Feb. 14, 2002, shooting and subsequent cover-up, he will face a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison.

Defense lawyer Billy Martin said Christofi's death was a "tragic accident."

Williams, who once held an $86 million contract with the New Jersey Nets, leaned across the defense table and stared intently at the jurors as the lawyers argued. Behind him, his wife, Tanya, an attorney who gave birth to the couple's second child two weeks ago, sat in the front row of the standing-room-only courtroom.

His lawyers, Martin and Joseph Hayden Jr., told the jury that prosecutors had distorted what was essentially a sad, but straightforward, accident in the master bedroom of Williams' 41-room mansion in Hunterdon County.

The lawyers said Williams, who was giving a tour of the property to four members of the Harlem Globetrotters and several other friends, did not see Christofi enter the room. They said he was not aware that the chauffeur was in the path of his Browning Citori shotgun when he flipped it shut.

The violent motion and debris in the 10-year-old weapon's inner mechanism caused it to malfunction and go off, Martin said.

Prosecutor Steven Lember argued Williams alone was responsible for the shooting.

"That gun was never pointed, it was not aimed and it was not meant to be directed at Gus Christofi," Martin said.

The lawyer equated the shooting a recent instance where a tree fell onto a highway, striking a car and killing motorists.

"It's just a tragic accident," Martin said.

Hayden said that the great speed with which the incident unfolded suggested an unexpected incident rather than a crime. He pointed to witness testimony that the gun went off within seconds of Williams lifting it from the gun cabinet.

"We are going to spend three months on events that took maybe three seconds," Hayden said.

Both lawyers seized on the revelation late in the trial that the prosecution had failed to turn over a gun expert's photographs and notes as they were required by law. They suggested it proved prosecutors were committed more to winning a conviction against a celebrity defendant than to justice.

"Is it any coincidence that we didn't get this important discovery until after we had rested?" Hayden asked.

Leaning toward the jury box to just above a whisper, he told the jury, "It's out of control, folks, and you saw it at the end of this case. But you know what? It's not my government. It's not Judge Coleman's government. And it's not Mr. Lember's government. It's your government, and I ask you to reject these charges as a matter of conscience."

The lawyers attacked the credibility of key prosecution witnesses Benoit Benjamin and Kent Culuko. Both testified that Williams saw the victim and cursed at him before the gun went off, and Benjamin said he actually saw Williams pull the trigger.

Hayden noted that the men were among several houseguests who secured deals with prosecutors: Benjamin was granted immunity from prosecution and Culuko was allowed to enter a diversionary program known as pre-trial intervention (PTI).

Hayden reminded the jury that Benjamin tried engage in a "shakedown" of the defense for a job and money and was angry when they denied him. He also told the jury that Benjamin lied about where he was standing at the time of the crime and how many games he played as a Harlem Globetrotter.

"How would it be fair, in terms of Jay, to decide to use his testimony in all its proven falsehoods in connection to this very, very serious case?" Hayden asked.

Hayden said Culuko, a former European pro basketball player who was trying to secure financing for a youth basketball camp, used the athlete as a meal ticket until the shooting put his business in danger.

"The time came that the meal ticket was punched out and the time came that Mr. Culuko desperately needed a deal for himself," Hayden said. He argued Culuko embellished his account to get into the diversionary program.

"To him, PTI was his 30 pieces of silver," Hayden said.

Witnesses, including Culuko, testified that Williams instructed them to say Christofi took his own life and tried to stage the death scene to look like a suicide, even wiping down the shotgun.

The defense lawyers, however, spent little time discussing charges, including evidence and witness tampering, stemming from a cover-up that occurred after Christofi's death.

Unlike the top counts of aggravated and reckless manslaughter, the cover-up charges do not carry mandatory prison time. Martin said Williams became a "madman" because of the shock of the shooting and blamed the others for not helping him stay calm.

"Jayson needed a friend to step up for him and nobody did," the lawyers said.

Lember and assistant prosecutor Katharine Errickson, whose presentations followed the defense, ridiculed that explanation.

"The defense has been that it's everyone's fault but the defendant's," Errickson said.

The prosecutor also dismissed charges of impropriety by the prosecution. She said failing to turn over the photographs was an unintentional mistake and one that had not caused the defense any harm. She said the proof that the witnesses had not been coached was in the slight disparities in their stories.

If we told them what to say, she told the jury, then all their stories would be exactly alike.

To win a conviction on aggravated manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, the prosecutors must prove Williams recklessly caused the death of Christofi "under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life." They do not have to prove he intended to harm Christofi.

To win a reckless manslaughter conviction, which carries a maximum 10-year sentence, the prosecution must prove only that Williams caused the death through recklessness.

Lember told the jury that while the actual discharging of the gun might have been accident, everything leading up to the shooting was a conscious and reckless choice by Williams.

Among the choices he noted was that Williams kept four of the six guns in his cabinet loaded; that he did not check the gun for shells or in the alternative, chose to play around with a loaded weapon in a room full of people; that he did not engage the gun's safety and that he had been drinking before he handled the gun.

"What amongst any of those steps is an accident? Everything is volitional. Everything is intentional up to the actual shooting," he said.

He called Williams' claim that he had not seen Christofi unbelievable, noting that even the defense's own expert put the distance between muzzle and victim at just three feet.

"It's as close as I'm standing to the front of the jury box," Lember said, leaning forward and rapping on the wooden rail. "He couldn't have missed Gus Christofi. He was right there."

Lember also attacked the defense's claim that the gun went off because of a malfunction. He reminded jurors that no expert had ever been able to recreate such a malfunction with the gun, but said that even if they had, "trying to place the blame on the shotgun makes no sense."

"The shotgun alone did not kill Gus Christofi," Lember said. "The shotgun alone did not fly from the gun cabinet The shotgun alone did not point itself directly at Gus Christofi. The shotgun alone did not snap itself together."

He also told the jury Williams targeted Christofi for abuse that night, first in a restaurant and then just before the shooting, because as an outsider in a group of former teammates, friends and professional athletes, he was a "convenient foil."

"[Williams said], 'I'm going to full around with him.' And he did, fatally," Lember said.

As the prosecutor spoke, Christofi's sister, Andrea Adams, apparently overcome by emotion, rose from her seat near the jury box and left. The panelists watched her leave.