Prosecutors may have launched their rebuttal case against Margaret Rudin Friday, but it was the defense lawyer and the judge that set off fireworks in the courtroom.

Though it's common knowledge in the Las Vegas legal community that defense lawyer Tom Pitaro and Judge Joseph Bonaventure are like brothers outside the courtroom, the two tangled in a heated battle that led to a series of screaming matches.

"You want to yell at me, go ahead. Don't do it front of the jury," Pitaro told the Queens-born jurist without the jury present. "It's been going on so long its become a joke."

Pitaro charged that the judge's loud admonishments this week are affecting the trial and hurting his client, who faces a possible life sentence if convicted of the murder of her millionaire husband, Ron Rudin.

"I have a higher responsibility than to you and myself, and that is the responsibility I have to this lady," Pitaro said.

But Bonaventure didn't budge, saying that any yelling he directed at the defense was done when the jury was out of the courtroom.

"I ain't changing, if you want to know the truth. It is my responsibility to run this trial. If you don't like it, that's fine," Bonaventure shot back.

The exchange followed an earlier argument, in which Pitaro vowed to call surrebuttal witnesses if Bonaventure granted the prosecution permission to call rebuttal witnesses the defense believed were inappropriate.

Perceiving it as a threat to extend the already lengthy trial, Bonaventure exploded.

"I don't care if this case goes another month," Bonaventure fired back. "Don't threaten me."

With Pitaro still standing, Bonaventure swiftly called the court to a lunch recess and was heading to his chambers when Pitaro asked to put something on the record.

But Bonaventure stormed off, saying, "No, not now."

When court resumed, Pitaro finally made his request — for Bonaventure to stop yelling at him in front of the jury and making "snide remarks."

But Bonaventure retorted that it's his job to make sure the trial — already in its eighth week — moves along. To illustrate his point, he cited a case in which the judge had taken a backseat — "like you would like me to take a backseat," he said to Pitaro. "That trial went on for nine months."

"I've been a judge for 22 years and I'm not going to stop now," Bonaventure said. "I think everything I said raising my voice was always outside the presence of the jury."

Earlier, prosecutor Chris Owens blasted Pitaro as a "bully baiting everybody" and charged that the defense is responsible for the loud pitch in the courtroom.

"I think that a lot of what the court's done is responding to the yelling from the defense attorneys," Owens said.

The jurors didn't get to watch the drama by the courtroom players unfold, but they did hear testimony from police crime analyst Michael Perkins, who was recalled to the stand by prosecutors.

Perkins attempted to rip apart defense expert John Thornton's assertion that blood on the walls could not have come from the gun that killed Ron Rudin.

"There were drops that were consistent with what I said on direct," he said. In his previous testimony, Perkins contended that traces of blood on the walls in the Rudins' bedroom — where prosecutors contend the real estate mogul was killed — could have been the result of a gunshot from a .22 caliber pistol.

Thornton had said a gunshot from that weapon would not have propelled the blood as far as the wall, where traces were found. The defense contends the blood, detected by Luminol tests, was that of Rudin's third wife, Peggy, who committed suicide in the bedroom.

Pitaro generated some controversy during his cross-examination, asking Perkins to step down from the witness stand so he could "hang" a picture frame on its surface using his finger as the nail.

"Nothing personal, but I'm going to have to object to Mr. Pitaro using his finger as a nail," Owens said, prompting laughter from the gallery.

The demonstration was the defense's attempt to show that the frame, which hung over the Rudins' bed, would have rested on the surface of the wall, making it impossible for blood to go behind the frame without getting on the frame itself.

Luminol tests showed a large amount of blood behind the picture frame, but Perkins admitted that material taken from the frame yielded no evidence of blood.

When asked why he never investigated the frame himself, Perkins said he believed the frame had been cleaned.

"In my mind it had no further value," he said.

Also generating a stir was witness Leonard Castle, who disputed the accuracy of a police report saying that a neighbor threatened Ron Rudin and him in the weeks before the real estate mogul's Dec. 18, 1994, disappearance.

According to Castle, the neighbor, Bob Lassetter, threatened him but he did not hear him threaten Rudin, contrary to the report.

The defense sought to use Castle's testimony to prove its contention that police did a shoddy job investigating Rudin's murder.