DURHAM, N.C. — The courtroom where Michael Peterson stands accused of murdering his wife has taken on the air of a waiting room lately, in which many participants sitting out the jury's verdict have turned their attention to anything but the trial.

Jurors mulling Peterson's fate have deliberated more than nine hours over three days without any hint that they've reached a decision.

While he waited on the jury, defense lawyer David Rudolf kicked back in his courtroom chair and slipped on a pair of white earbud headphones connected to an iPod MP3 player.

Defense lawyer David Rudolf during a moment of levity Wednesday while awaiting a verdict

"It's an eclectic mix," he told Courttv.com. "All different kinds of music. I've got some Eva Cassidy, The Rolling Stones, Warren Zevon, Joan Baez, U2, Eminem ..."

Peterson, who prosecutors say bludgeoned his wife, Kathleen Peterson, and then made the killing look like a stairway fall, spent the third day of jury deliberations talking with family members and jotting down notes.

At one point, the novelist and former newspaper columnist leafed through a copy of "Gender and German Cinema," which one of his daughters (by legal guardianship) brought to court.

Prosecutors Jim Hardin Jr. and Freda Black have largely remained in their offices upstairs, on the sixth floor of the Durham County Courthouse.  For them, the waiting game has provided an opportunity to check in on other cases in the county, return phone calls and engage in other less business-like pursuits.

"I have played solitaire on my computer for the first time in six months," said Freda Black, adding that she won, but after four or five tries. "I'll just reset it if I don't like the deck."

Anything to take one's mind off of what might have been, said the attorney.

"You think, 'Maybe if I'd said something this way,' or 'Why didn't I say this in my closing argument ...' I think it's human nature to second guess yourself," said Black, whose longest wait for a verdict spanned about four full days (the Peterson jury is on an abbreviated schedule, ending for the day at 3 or 3:30 p.m.).

"It's frustrating to wait. I think it's harder to wait than it is to present your case," she said.

While others are trying to get their mind off the case, jurors, however, appear to be hard at work.

At 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, the foreperson sent out a note asking Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. for a paper easel and a marker.

Hudson granted the request, but asked lawyers to make sure the oversized pad of paper was absent any doodlings or notes; in 1996, documents, including notes Hardin had made during trial, were accidentally passed to jurors mulling the murder of a 2-year-old child.  Hudson, who was presiding over that trial as well, called the slip-up an accident and let deliberations continue.  But as the jurist made clear on Wednesday, he did not forget.

"As Mr. Hardin well knows, once it goes back there, there's not a lot you can do to bring it back," said Hudson.

Peterson, 59, could spend life in prison without parole if convicted of the Dec. 9, 2001, alleged murder.