DURHAM, N.C. — During their second day of deliberations in the murder trial of novelist Michael Peterson, jurors were denied access to transcripts of a prosecutor's opening statement in which he claimed to have identified a missing murder weapon.

"One of the things I told you was that the opening statements was not evidence in this case," Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. told the jury Tuesday. "So because it's not evidence in this case, the court will not allow it to go back in the back room and be considered by the jury."

The request for the transcripts could signal that jurors are taking the lead of defense lawyer David Rudolf, who, in his closing argument, turned a taped segment of the prosecutor's opening against him.

In the segment Rudolf played aloud in court, prosecutor Jim Hardin Jr. boasts of having determined the murder weapon — a 40-inch "blow poke" fireplace tool that he claimed went missing from the household after the Dec. 9, 2001, murder.

Rudolf produced what he claimed was the missing blow poke near the end of Peterson's three-month trial, suggesting that cobwebs and dust on the fireplace tool, along with its undented condition, ruled out its use in a beating.

Prosecutors claim that Peterson used the blow poke, or something similar, to bludgeon his wife to death. The 59-year-old novelist could spend life in prison without parole if convicted.

Rudolf, who says Kathleen Peterson died from a fall down the stairs, argued unsuccessfully in favor of letting the jury have the transcripts.

Jurors, already on a relaxed schedule, also sent out another note asking, in advance, for a break at 2 p.m. Hudson granted the request and urged jurors to take breaks at their leisure in the future.

After deliberating for 45 minutes Monday, jurors spent another four and a half hours on Tuesday deliberating the first-degree murder charge.

Wednesday's deliberations are scheduled to end early at 2:15 due to a doctor's appointment for one of the jurors.