Virginia Beach, Va. ? The jury in John Allen Muhammad’s murder trial got the case Thursday after the prosecutor said during closing arguments that Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo formed “a sniper-spotter killing team” with Muhammad as the “captain.”

The jury of 11 whites and one black was to begin deliberating this morning.

Meanwhile, Malvo’s lawyer — delivering his opening statement at Malvo’s trial 15 miles away in Chesapeake — said Muhammad turned Malvo into a “child soldier,” brainwashing him into thinking that the killings were “designed to achieve a greater good of a fairer and righteous society.”

At Muhammad’s trial, prosecutor Richard Conway forcefully countered the defense’s central argument — that Muhammad cannot get the death penalty because the evidence points to Malvo as the triggerman in the sniper attacks. Conway portrayed Muhammad as playing a vital role.

“We have a sniper-spotter killing team, taking out innocent people,” the prosecutor told the jury. Pointing at Muhammad, he said: “Who do you think was the captain of this killing team? He’s sitting right in front of you.”

Conway noted that a piece of text found on an electronic organizer in Muhammad’s car said: “The truth of the Muhammad assassinations.”

“This is so telling,” Conway said. “Does this say, ‘The truth of the Malvo assassinations’?”

Defense attorney Peter Greenspun, at the beginning of his closing statement, acknowledged the difficulty of setting aside the emotional testimony about the shootings and focusing on the evidence.

“How can you keep an open mind looking at those pictures?” he said, referring to some of the gruesome crime-scene photos.

He said a close look at the evidence, discounting the emotion, would show that prosecutors had not proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“They’ve done a great job proving that Mr. Malvo” is connected to many of the shootings by forensic evidence, Greenspun said. “There is a canyon of a lack of evidence about Mr. Muhammad.”

Lead prosecutor Paul Ebert scoffed at the notion that Malvo was running the operation.

“Do you believe in your common sense that a 17-year-old boy recruited him?” Ebert asked the jury as he pointed at Muhammad.