NEW YORK — Jurors in Sean "Puffy" Combs' weapons possession and bribery trial strode into court Tuesday morning with overnight bags and smiles of anticipation. After six weeks and 60 witnesses, they were finally to begin deliberating the rap mogul's fate.

But that never happened Tuesday. The prosecutor's closing argument stretched into a six-hour marathon that had jurors groaning, the defense griping and the judge postponing the start of deliberations for a day.

Even prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos seemed surprised at his own loquaciousness.

"I promise you there will come a time when I sit down," he told jurors as the hand on the courtroom clock inched toward 4.

He joked that the summation was "the longest I ever talked in my life," but the panel wasn't laughing. One middle-aged woman scowled at him when he said he planned to talk another hour, and she rolled her eyes sympathetically at Combs when she and the rest of the panel trudged out of the jury box for the day.

Combs, however, was paying close attention as Bogdanos urged the seven men and five women to return convictions that could send him to jail for 15 years. The 31-year-old Bad Boy Entertainment CEO shook his head as the prosecutor argued that Combs was guilty but expected the jury to "believe him [because] he is, after all, Puff Daddy."

"When you have been so powerful for so long, you begin to believe that you are above the law," said Bogdanos, pointing to the defense table where Combs sat next to lawyer Johnnie Cochran. He added, "Justice cannot be bought at any price."

The charges against Combs and two co-defendants, bodyguard Anthony "Wolf" Jones and rapper Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, stem from a Dec. 27, 1999, shooting at Club New York, a Times Square disco where the trio was partying with Combs' then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez.

After an argument broke out between Combs' entourage and another group of patrons, guns were pulled and three bystanders were wounded. Barrow, an artist on Combs' label, is accused of shooting the three, and Combs of firing a bullet into the air. Combs and Jones are charged with offering their chauffeur, who spirited them from the scene in a custom SUV, $50,000 and a diamond ring to take the rap for a 9mm gun found in the car. According to the prosecution, a second gun was flung from the getaway car as police closed in.

In defense closing arguments Monday — Combs' lawyer spoke for three hours and his co-defendants' lawyers about an hour each — the prosecution's witnesses were put on trial. The defense lawyers attacked them as "bad people" who took the stand to advance their multimillion-dollar civil suits against Combs.

Bogdanos ridiculed the personal assaults on the witnesses, saying "it's not about who they are, but what they saw."

He began his summation by playing a tape of a panicked 911 call from inside the club.

"This is not the Puff Daddy trial, this is not the Jennifer Lopez trial, not the Shyne or Wolf trial," said Bogdanos. "Lest we forget, it's about three people shot in a club."

He told jurors to focus on the "undeniable physical evidence," offered by ballistic experts who mapped the trajectory of the gunshots. He said their testimony meshed perfectly with that of the gunshot victims who said Combs wielded a gun.

"You can't change it. You can't spin it. You can close your eyes to it if you want, but that's what you'd be doing not to see that it was defendant Combs who fired that single shot," he said.

The prosecutor launched into a detailed recounting of the testimony and exhibits. He went over each witness who testified that Combs did not have a gun at the time of the shooting, and pointed to inconsistencies he suggested were proof of manufactured or purchased testimony. Of Charise Myers, the female bouncer who said Combs' hands were empty when she fell on him during the shooting, Bogdanos said, "Sometimes good people do bad things."

He pointed to phone records indicating calls between Combs and his key witnesses — communication the witnesses denied on the stand — and argued the case was "rampant with bribery, money, influence and witnesses changing their testimony."

"The truth is bad for the defense," he said.

He also derided the suggestion made in defense closings that he should have called Lopez, asking incredulously "I'm supposed to call the defendant's girlfriend? ... I'm not a complete moron."

For the first few hours, jurors took notes. But as the afternoon drew on, they seemed restless. One woman examined her manicure. A man stared at the gallery, and another toyed with his glasses. Bogdanos, who had promised to be done by lunch, plodded on.

"He was off by three hours," Jones' lawyer Michael Bachner complained to the judge after the jury was sent home. "It was like the Stockholm Syndrome here."