Beverly Hills, Calif. ? Actress Winona Ryder’s case went to the jury Monday after the prosecution and defense presented opposing portraits of her as a shoplifter out for thrills and as a victim of Saks Fifth Avenue and lying security guards.

The jury was to begin deliberations today.

Ryder, 31, is charged with grand theft, burglary and vandalism for allegedly stealing $5,570 worth of merchandise from the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue store. The charges carry up to three years in prison.

“She came, she stole, she left. End of story,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Rundle said in her closing argument.

“The law doesn’t say only poor people steal,” Rundle added. “It must have occurred to some of you, ‘Why would Winona Ryder steal?’

“Nowhere does it say people steal because they have to. People steal out of greed, envy, spite, because it’s there or for the thrill.”

She noted that in the introduction to one of Ryder’s movies, “Girl, Interrupted,” there is a voiceover in which the film’s mentally disturbed heroine talks about the thrill of walking out of a store with something unpaid for.

During testimony last week, Saks security staff testified that Ryder cut sensor tags off items in a dressing room and claimed after being caught that a director told her to shoplift to prepare for a movie role.

“The law doesn’t say crime is OK if your director told you to do it,” Rundle said. “And there is no evidence a director told her to do it.”

In his closing, defense attorney Mark Geragos suggested that Saks, trying to avoid civil liability, conspired with employees to invent a story that would make Ryder appear to be a thief and vandal.

Geragos charged that witnesses changed their stories and, in one case, taped over a security video that might have contained important evidence.