NEW YORK — Sean "Puffy" Combs rose at the defense table Monday morning, crossed his gold cuff-linked wrists and faced jurors poised to hear his defense team's opening argument.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sean 'Puff Daddy' Combs," attorney Benjamin Brafman boomed over the startled courtroom.

"You can call him Sean," Brafman told jurors who had just heard a prosecutor describe Combs as a manipulative criminal. "You can call him Mr. Combs. You can call him Puff Daddy. You can call him just plain Puffy. But the one thing you cannot do in this case is call him guilty."

After nearly two weeks of snail-paced jury selection, the rap music king's gun possession and bribery trial opened Monday with a bang. In fiery opening statements, the prosecution implored jurors to use Shakespeare's "even-handed justice" to convict Combs in a 1999 nightclub shooting "no matter who he is," while his defense said Combs was being targeted because of his celebrity and promised jurors they would "feel good" about acquitting him.

"This case isn't about rap music, but in a way it is about rap, a bum rap," Brafman told jurors.

Courtroom sketch of Combs Monday

The fireworks in a Manhattan courtroom packed with an international array of journalists continued as the prosecution called its first important witness, Combs' bodyguard Curtis Howard. After Howard testified that he never saw his boss with a gun on the night of the shooting, a frustrated prosecutor — outside the presence of the jury — labeled him a liar who perjured himself on the stand to help the defense.

Combs, the 31-year-old multimillionaire CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment, laughed and shook his head in amusement as Brafman and Bogdanos exchanged barbs over Howard's testimony.

It was a rare display of levity for Combs, who faces 15 years in prison if convicted of three counts of criminal possession of a weapon and a single count of bribing a witness. The charges stem from a fracas at Club New York, a Times Square nightclub where Combs' was partying with his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and several other friends.

Bogdanos told jurors that Combs' chauffeur, Wardel Fenderson, would testify that the music mogul came to the club armed with a semiautomatic gun. The prosecutor said Combs and his entourage invited a fight as they barreled out of the club, shoving and pushing patrons out of their way. When one man — whose drink Combs' had knocked over — pushed back, a fight ensued, the prosecutor said.

He described how Combs' co-defendant and rap protege, Jamal "Shyne" Barrow fired into the crowd, striking three bystanders in a desperate attempt to kill the man "who disrespected his boss." The 22-year-old Barrow faces attempted murder charges.

The prosecutor alleged for the first time Monday that while all eyes in the crowded club were on Barrow, Combs drew a gun from his waistband and fired a single shot at the ceiling. When the club descended into chaos, the prosecutor said, Combs fled the club leaving Lopez and co-defendant and bodyguard Anthony "Wolf" Jones, 35, in his wake.

"It isn't until Mr. Combs gets to [his chauffeur-driven SUV] that he realizes he's fled the club without Miss Lopez," said Bogdanos.

Eventually, Lopez and Jones joined Combs in the SUV. The prosecutor said Fenderson, perhaps the prosecution's most important witness, will testify that Combs and Jones urged him to run 11 lights to elude the police because they knew they were carrying illegal weapons. As police closed in on them, Combs tossed a gun from the vehicle while Jones tried to hide a second weapon within the car, Bogdanos said.

When police stopped the vehicle and discovered the second gun, all four occupants were placed in handcuffs and, according to Bogdanos, Combs and Jones began plotting a way out of trouble — by bribing Fenderson into taking the rap.

"I can't go to jail, I'm Puff Daddy," the prosecutor quoted Combs as telling his chauffeur. He said Combs promised the driver money and a ring, a gift from Lopez.

Combs' defense ridiculed Bogdanos' case, with Brafman saying that, if opening statements were a road map, the jury would be "drowning in a sea of reasonable doubt." The lawyer told jurors to "sit back and relax" and prepare to watch "a war" between the state and the defense.

Brafman claimed Combs was a victim of a "rush to judgment" by police and prosecutors bent on nailing a celebrity.

"It happened because he's a superstar," Brafman said. "Puff Daddy wouldn't be here if he was John Q. Public."

He maintained that Combs never had a gun and that anyone who testifies that he did "has a record ... or a lawsuit" — a reference to the million-dollar suits filed by Fenderson and the shooting victims.

Brafman scored an early victory when Howard, a large goateed man who towered over the witness stand, told jurors that he spent hours with Combs on the night of the shooting and never saw a gun. He said he saw Combs dancing on a table with his arms raised and his waistband exposed.

"I did not observe a gun," said Howard.

Bogdanos, however, attacked Howard's credibility, pointing out a dozen inconsistencies between his testimony to the grand jury and what he was telling jurors. The prosecutor, for example, pointed out that Howard told the grand jury that he was the one who had asked about Lopez's whereabouts after the shooting, but on the stand, he said it was Combs who expressed concern.

Howard, a former New York City corrections officer, had also told the grand jury that, during the five years he had worked for Combs, he had never seen him checked for weapons when entering a nightclub, although Combs attended clubs three or four nights a week. On the stand Monday, however, Howard said he had seen the rap mogul checked for weapons a couple of times.

"Every time he 'failed' to remember something it was to benefit the defendant," said Bogdanos after the jury and Howard were dismissed for the day. "He got on the stand and lied and lied and lied again and again."

It was an unusual move for a prosecutor to accuse his own witness of perjury during his testimony, and Brafman deemed it "as reckless as you can be."

Howard's testimony is to continue Wednesday morning when the trial resumes.