Amabile said that the state has wrongly focused on convicting Copney when the blame actually rests on Jiggetts, whom he called “the homicidal bully from Harlem.”

“You know these things happen,” Amabile said about the frequent incidence of violence during drug transactions. “It is sad, sad, sad. These happen every day of the week in Roxbury—it’s not even a story; nobody cares. But it’s not supposed to happen in a Harvard dorm.”

“This investigation has been clouded in a thick fog, a crimson fog,” continued Amabile, who has referenced the Harvard education of both prosecutors in the case on numerous occasions. “When you get caught in a thick fog, you get disoriented all of a sudden. You start losing your way, and you lose sight of which way is left and which way is right, what’s up and what’s down, what’s frontward and backward, what’s right and what’s wrong. And that’s what happened.”

Acknowledging that Cosby’s death was “a tragedy of enormous magnitude,” Amabile said that the jury may “run the risk of committing an almost equal tragedy, and that’s convicting an innocent person.”

He opened and closed his remarks, which lasted just over an hour, with a description of Lady Justice, whom he said had been “wrested from her pedestal” during this case.

“She’s blindfolded, which means she’s not caring about race or status or social order. She’s immune from bias or prejudice,” he told the jurors as they prepared to render a verdict. The jurors were asked before their selection whether the fact that the defendant and victim in the case are African-American would impact their judgement.

After hearing instructions from presiding judge John T. Lu, the jury began its deliberations yesterday afternoon.

—Xi Yu contributed reporting to this story.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.