DENVER -- Jurors in the case against a man accused of killing Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams heard closing statements on Tuesday afternoon, a day after the defendant declined to testify.

Prosecutors began their closing arguments after the judge read the jury instructions. Jurors began deliberations Tuesday evening. Willie D. Clark is facing 21 counts, including first-degree murder, second-degree assault and attempted first-degree murder. If convicted, Clark could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Addressing the jury, Chief Deputy District Attorney Tim Twining said their job was straightforward.

"Did the people prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this, man Willie Clark, committed these crimes," the prosecuting said, pointing at Clark seated at the defense table.

The jury's challenge was whether to find Clark responsible for "the senseless murder of Darrent Williams," the serious wounding of two limo passengers and the attempt to kill 14 other passengers, Twining said.

"What it really comes down to is your life experience, your common sense. Did it have the ring of truth?" Twining said.

It is the jury’s responsibility to “hold this man, 'Little Let Loose,' responsible under the law," Twining said, using Clark's street name.

"It was this man who indiscriminately ... took it upon himself to unload his .40-caliber handgun into that limousine full of innocent people," Twining said.

The prosecutor dealt head-on with defense attorneys' assertion that four key witnesses against Clark were given plea agreements in federal drug-trafficking prosecutions.

"Yes, indeed, the federal prosecutors cut deals," Twining said.

"All of you understood that it takes a thief to catch a thief. Or in this case: It takes a Crip to catch a Crip," the prosecutor said, referring to Clark's membership in an Eastside Denver street gang.

When it was the defense's turn, attorney Abraham Hutt insisted that Clark wasn’t in the white Chevy Tahoe involved in the drive-by shooting that killed Williams.

Clark was downtown in a black SUV, talking with his girlfriend on his cell phone, Hutt said. The girlfriend called Clark at 2:17 a.m., just 21 seconds after the Hummer limo driver called 911 to report the deadly shooting.

“(Clark) did not shoot at that car. He didn’t kill Darrent Williams,” Hutt said.

Hutt began by criticizing police and prosecutors for how they handled the murder case.

“There was a lot about how this case was investigated and presented that is not right. And I think that you know that,” Hutt said.

He said Denver police detectives failed to check a green Ford Expedition driven by a convicted-drug dealer named Felix Abram for gunshot residue or empty shell casings.

Defense attorneys repeatedly suggested that Abram and Daniel “Ponytail” Harris, another witness who got a plea-agreement to testify against Clark, might be the real shooters in the killing.

“The people of the city and county of Denver deserve better,” Hutt said.

“Darrent Williams deserves better,” he said, as do the other limo passengers who were wounded or ducking for their lives that night.

Hutt portrayed Clark as a man who was framed by his former friends and fellow drug-dealers who cut deals to spare themselves a combined 188 years in prison.

"That’s what this is about folks, Willie Clark is the scapegoat," Hutt said.

But in the prosecution rebuttal, Bruce Levin ticked off what he called a mountain of irrefutable evidence against Clark.

On a big screen TV in the courtroom, Levin showed jurors a close-up autopsy photograph of Williams' neck with a copper-colored mangled bullet jutting from the fatal wound, clotted with blood.

"(Clark) put that bullet in Darrent Williams’ neck while he’s shooting up a limousine with 17 innocent people in it," Levin hammered away. "Irrefutable evidence in this case."

Levin said Clark always carried a .40-caliber weapon and, after the murder, told a fellow gang member that he needed a new “twin” gun because he had to break up and discard the old one. Williams was killed by a bullet fired from a .40-caliber gun barrel found discarded in a field near Clark’s home. Nearby police found the once-white Chevy Tahoe, disguised with black spray-paint, its interior torched, that prosecutors said Clark was driving when he fired the deadly shots.

The prosecutor invoked Clark’s words, captured in a recorded jail-house phone call from Brian Hicks, a fellow gang member who loaned Clark the white Tahoe.

"It was a blind-side hit. It was a blind-side hit," Levin said, repeating the words jurors heard Clark say in the recording played in court.

“His voice, put it in your head,” the prosecutor said, “and as you look through the evidence, that’s his confession. He’s a murderer and (made) a confession that slipped out during a phone call.”

Levin said told jurors the trial was "taking you into a world that I refer to as the belly of the beast."

"It’s the world where the exchange of a few words, fueled by a little bit of alcohol … where a push or a shove in front of your fellow gang members …is enough for Willie Clark to decide to unload, to let loose on a limousine with 17 innocent people," Levin said.

Earlier, after trial testimony ended and before closing arguments began, deputies rushed to quell a hallway shouting match between supporters of Clark and the family and friends of Williams.

A deputy said harsh words were exchanged outside the elevator on the fourth floor, but the team of deputies providing intense security for the murder trial quickly separated the two parties. The slain Bronco player’s mother, Rosalind Williams, was among one group that also included Williams' friends from his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.

The two groups made peace afterward, said district attorney spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough.

A woman in the Williams family group hugged a man outside that group in the hallway after lunch.

After the dispute, a couple of deputies were seen separately escorting family and friends from the Williams and Clark parties to prevent further flare-ups.

Prosecutors wrapped up their case against Clark by calling two final witnesses Tuesday morning.

A rebuttal prosecution witness didn’t live up to her prior billing as trial testimony ended.

Last week, prosecutor Tim Twining said that Tanisha Lintz would deny that Willie Clark was at a downtown after-hours club about that same time that Darrent Williams was killed a mile way.

On Friday Lintz’s cousin, Jazelle Hudson, testified that she and Lintz saw Clark at the after-hours club driving a black SUV -- not the white Chevrolet Tahoe prosecution witnesses say Clark drove when he fired the deadly shots at Williams’ limousine just after 2 a.m. New Year’s Day 2007.

“Would it change your memory of events if Tanisha (Lintz) said it didn’t happen?” Twining asked Hudson.

The defense successfully objected to that question, so Hudson didn’t have to answer.

But on Tuesday, Lintz didn’t contradict her cousin’s statement.

Under questioning by defense attorney Darren Cantor, Lintz said she and Hudson saw Clark at an after-hours club at 18th Street and Glenarm Place.

“And when you went to the after-hours (club), you saw Mr. Clark in a black SUV?” Cantor asked.

“Yes, he pulled up beside us,” Lintz said.

Homicide Detective Mark Crider testified that Lintz’s Tuesday account contradicted what she told him on the phone in May 2007.

“I asked (Lintz) if she saw Willie Clark at all” that night, Crider said right after Lintz left the stand.

“She said: ‘No I did not see him at all,’ ” Crider recalled Lintz saying.

Crider said Lintz refused to come to the police department to do a recorded interview.

After their testimony, Judge Christina Habas said, "The evidence in this case is now closed."

The case was given to the jury at about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday.

Williams was in a limousine with friends when he was shot on New Year's Day 2007. They had just left the Safari Club on Broadway Street where prosecutors said Williams' group of football players got into an altercation with a group that included Clark, a suspected gang member.

Prosecutors said the altercation started inside the nightclub when a member of the Broncos players' entourage accidentally sprayed champagne on revelers celebrating the new year.