DURHAM, N.C. — After three months, 65 witnesses and four blow pokes, the beginning of the end of Michael Peterson's murder trial came into focus Tuesday, after a judge scheduled jury deliberations to begin Monday.

Closing arguments for Peterson's defense will come Thursday, followed by the prosecution's Friday.

The scheduling decisions came on a slow day in Peterson's first-degree murder trial, highlighted by the expulsion of one juror and a brief skirmish over what jurors will be told about another stairway fall 18 years ago.

Prosecutors believe Peterson, 59, bludgeoned his wife of five years to death and disguised it as a stairway fall. They say her death bears a suspicious resemblance to the 1985 death in Germany of his neighbor Elizabeth Ratliff, who was also found at the bottom of a staircase.

But Peterson says he was out by the pool when his wife died on Dec. 9, 2001, and denies having anything to do with Ratliff's death 18 years ago. He raised Ratliff's two children as his own after she died, and they have supported him during the trial.

Prosecutors were allowed to bring up the Ratliff death in Germany — for which Peterson was never charged — under the North Carolina rules of evidence. Prosecutors can present evidence of "prior acts" to a jury, but only to show "motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity or absence of mistake, entrapment or accident."

Lawyers battled Tuesday over what context Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. would give to this evidence when he formally instructs the jury.

Defense lawyers angled for a strict instruction on the Ratliff evidence, one that would require jurors to find that Ratliff not only was the victim of a homicide but that Peterson was the perpetrator. Prosecutors urged Hudson to deliver a more relaxed charge. 

"It just has to be substantial evidence supporting a reasonable finding by the jury that it happened," argued prosecutor James Hardin Jr. in court. At the least, prosecutors have argued, Ratliff's death was evidence that Peterson had seen a staircase death and knew how to fake one.

Also on Tuesday, a juror was excused from the panel because she was an acquaintance of Dr. James McElhaney, a state rebuttal witness and injury biomechanics expert who said the stairway fall was unlikely.

The juror and McElhaney were neighbors in Virginia years ago, although she said she hasn't spoken with McElhaney's wife in five years. The intermittent contact was, nevertheless, enough for Hudson to remove her from the panel. She was replaced by a male alternate.

On Wednesday, the court learned that another juror had been detained Tuesday on charges of being drunk and disorderly and had been held overnight. Whether that juror will be allowed to continue remains to be determined.

The remaining jurors made it known Tuesday that they plan to give the evidence a thorough review, outstripping Hudson's plan to show them items they selected from a list of the 500-plus pieces of evidence.

Tuesday's original plan was for jurors to view the evidence in what Rudolf derisively deemed a "garage sale" format, with placards, the bloody clothing, piles of transcripts, and other evidence laid out throughout the front portion of the courtroom.

But when it became clear that the many pieces of evidence simply would not fit in the space, Hudson reverted to one of the defense's original suggestions, asking both sides to print up a list of exhibits for jurors to choose from.

The bulk of Tuesday's proceedings was consumed by this change of plans: from setting up and breaking down a long card table to carefully unpacking and repacking bubble-wrapped champagne flutes Michael and Kathleen Peterson drank from the night she died.

Four of the items to consider will be fireplace "blow pokes" brought into evidence over the course of the trial. Prosecutors speculate that Peterson hit his wife over the head with a blow poke, which had since disappeared. They showed jurors a twin of the missing tool, but defense lawyers later produced what they said was the actual missing poker. And two others were added to the mix Monday, possibly confusing the situation further.

To find Peterson guilty of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole, the jury will have to find not only that the novelist murdered his wife, but that the crime was willful, deliberate and premeditated. Prosecutors said Tuesday that they would not seek a lesser charge of second-degree murder.

Lawyers will meet briefly Wednesday to finish hashing out just what charge the jury will receive. The jury's next scheduled appearance is Thursday at 9:30 a.m. when Rudolf will present his closing argument. Prosecutors Freda Black and Hardin both give a closing argument on Friday.

Court TV is broadcasting this trial live.