TOLEDO, Ohio — The murder of a nun 26 years ago was sparked by a priest's career disappointment, not devotion to Satan, a prosecutor asserted in closing arguments at the clergyman's trial Wednesday.

The prosecutor told jurors that the Rev. Gerald Robinson lashed out at the victim, a strong-willed, outspoken woman whose religious order ran the hospital where he worked, because he was deeply frustrated at being passed over for a position as a military chaplain and loathed his work giving last rites and comforting the sick.

"He had enough. The man had decided he had enough. He had taken a lot, but he wasn't going to take it anymore," prosecutor Dean Mandros said of the April 5, 1980, killing of Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl.

The prosecution danced around the issue of motive during the three-week trial, emphasizing to prospective jurors that prosecutors were not required to prove motive. They called witnesses, including a priest who specializes in the occult, who said the crime scene indicated a ritualistic and perhaps satanic murder. The victim was stabbed 31 times, including nine wounds made through an altar cloth in the shape of an inverted cross.

In his summation, however, Mandros appeared to back off assertions that Sr. Margaret Ann was offered as a human sacrifice to a diabolical power.

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"Is this some kind of satanic cult killing? No. Is this part of some ritualistic black Mass? No, sorry to disappoint," he said.

"This case is about perhaps the most common scenario there is for a homicide: A man got very angry at a woman and the woman died," he said, adding, "The only thing different is that the man wore a white color and the woman wore a habit."

He said the inverted cross, the exposing off the nun's genitals and an apparent anointing of her forehead with blood were "a bastardized version" of the last rites Robinson hated to perform and were designed "to degrade her, to mock her, to humiliate her, to bring her down to the lowest point he possibly could."

The jury, which includes three practicing Catholics, began weighing a murder charge against Robinson Wednesday afternoon. If convicted, the 68-year-old retired priest faces a potential life sentence. He maintains his innocence.

Before repairing to the jury room to deliberate, the panelists heard about four hours of arguments from lawyers. Both sides focused primarily on forensic evidence to bolster their cases.

A cold case squad arrested Robinson in 2004 after an officer noticed similarities between stains on the altar cloth and the shape of a priest's letter opener. During the trial, two of five experts in the world certified in bloodstain pattern analysis said stains on the cloth were consistent with the 8-inch dagger-like opener. The experts, including noted forensic scientist Henry Lee, said a dime-sized spot resembled a medallion on the opener that depicted the U.S. Capitol. Other prosecution witnesses testified that the tip of the opener fit perfectly into a hole in the victim's jawbone and that a dark spot under the medallion tested positive for human blood.

"If you don't believe he is the murderer, then you believe in an amazing series of coincidences that I would call mind-boggling," Mandros said.

He also noted that two witnesses saw Robinson in the area of the chapel the morning of the murder. The priest claimed he spent the morning alone in his apartment.

"We don't expect priests to kill, but do we expect them to lie to the police during a murder investigation? Who lies to the police during a murder investigation? Maybe the one who did the crime," Mandros said.

Robinson's defense emphasized other scientific findings. A minute amount of male DNA  was detected on the nun's underwear and on her fingernails. Tests determined that it did not belong to Robinson.

Defense attorney John Thebes said the genetic material on the fingernails was consistent with Sr. Margaret Ann scratching her assailant as he attacked her from behind and the DNA on the undergarments probably resulted from the killer struggling to disrobe her.

"That's what killers do. They leave their DNA under people's fingernails, on victim's underwear," Thebes said.

"The only DNA in this case excludes this man and points somewhere else," he said.

With his client sitting impassively at the defense table, the attorney told jurors that the murder weapon was not the priest's letter opener, but a pair of scissors missing from the chapel after the murder.

"It's the scissors," he said, pointing to a stain on the cloth that he said resembled scissors. "The scissors were never found!"

Prosecution experts have testified that scissors were not the murder weapon, but Thebes noted that the original medical examiner felt a pair similar to the ones used in the chapel could have caused some of the wounds the nun suffered.

Holding the nun's pinafore and the priest's letter opener, Thebes pointed to holes in the fabric and said, "These defects aren't wide enough. They aren't deep enough. This thing doesn't fit all the way in. This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the murder weapon, that is why."

In a brief rebuttal argument, prosecutor Christopher Adams disputed much of the defense's analysis of the forensic evidence. He said the amount of DNA belonging to the unidentified male was too small to be relevant and likely indicated contamination by medical workers or investigators at the time of the crime. To demonstrate the size of the genetic material, he poured a one-gram packet of coffee sweetener on the rail of the jury box.

"Thirty pecograms is 30 trillionths of a gram," he told jurors. "That's what we are talking about. That's how minute this amount of DNA is."