SCHENECTADY — A Schenectady County Court jury on Thursday began deliberating the second-degree murder charge against Omari Lee.

Lee, 27, also known as “O,” is accused of gunning down Xavier McDaniel, 21, inside his car April 3, 2007, at Jerry Burrell Park in the city. He is charged with shooting McDaniel because he believed McDaniel had stolen crack cocaine, $7,000 and a .357-caliber handgun from a Front Street apartment.

Closing arguments took more than seven hours Thursday with Acting County Judge Polly Hoye taking an hour to charge the jury. The jury began deliberating sometime after 5 p.m.

Defense attorney Mark Sacco spent two hours poking holes in testimony that prosecution witnesses provided during the trial, which began April 30. He said some witnesses lied to police and to the grand jury and so why should the jury believe them now? He also said some witnesses made deals with the prosecution to testify in return for lesser sentences on crimes they faced.

“So the case turns on what people saw and on their credibility,” Sacco said. “Are they telling the truth? Everyone has something to gain, everyone committed perjury.”

Sacco said witnesses failed to firmly link Lee to the crime and that the jury should seriously question prosecution witness Allen Blount’s involvement in the matter.

Blount said he saw Lee shoot McDaniel. Sacco said Blount should not be trusted. “He fled to Syracuse and lied to the grand jury and lied to the police and he told friends that if they talk to the cops, tell them, ‘I am not the shooter,’ ” he said.

Prosecutor Philip Mueller called the case “simple in its facts and rather complicated in its proof.” The proof is complicated by the nature of the case, by the fear people have in reporting to police or testifying about bad things that happen in the Hamilton Hill neighborhood, he said.

“We have had to scratch and claw our way to the truth,” Mueller said. “We have gotten to the bottom of the case and we have shown what happened in this case.”

He asked the jury not to consider each witness’ testimony separately, but to “put together the pieces of a puzzle, and the puzzle pieces point to Omari Lee as the only person to shoot Xavier McDaniel.”

Mueller said either Lee is guilty as charged, or he is guilty of “a monumental conspiracy of people who do not know him.”

Lee had faced a first-degree murder charge but the judge reduced the charge to second-degree murder after ruling there was no evidence to support prosecutors’ contentions that Lee was committing a robbery when he killed McDaniel.

If convicted on the top count, Lee faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life. Lee also faces charges related to previous shootings, and any time he gets on those charges could be added to the sentence for murder if he is convicted.