A 12-member jury in Superior Court in Norwich started deliberations Thursday in the murder trial of Jose E. Ramos. 

Ramos is charged with the Oct. 10, 2008, shooting death of Tynel Hardwick in front of the Rumors Bar & Grill on Boswell Avenue.

Prosecutor Lawrence J. Tytla and defense attorney Bruce B. McIntyre summed up their cases in closing arguments, and the jury began discussing the case after hearing instructions from Judge Arthur C. Hadden.

The jurors sent a note out with several questions about the case at the end of the day and are expected to resume deliberating Friday morning.

During the trial, the jury heard different versions of the event from the defendant himself, who after his arrest in 2012 confessed to detectives in a recorded interview and provided a written statement indicating he laid in wait across the street from the bar and shot Hardwick with a rifle.

On the witness stand Wednesday, he denied the shooting and said he had been forced into the confession.

The jury also heard apology letters that Ramos wrote to the victim's family and to his sisters while in police custody.

In the letter to Hardwick's mother, he admitted he was the man who hurt her family and that he wasn't sure why he had shot Hardwick.

During the trial, some witnesses had testified that Ramos had a beef with a woman in the bar that night and that Hardwick intervened.

Tytla, in his closing argument,  said one of the saddest things in his business is that serious crimes occur all the time for no good reason.

"One of the most pernicious words we come across is (of people) being 'disrespected,' and hearing of things that people should just slough off but they don't," Tytla said.

While the defense painted Ramos as a mentally ill and paranoid man, Tytla said there was no evidence of a diagnosis presented and that Ramos had appeared oriented throughout the case.

As for the police, members of Ramos' family and friends who had implicated him as the shooter, there was not "a scintilla of evidence" to suggest they should not be believed, Tytla said.

In his closing argument, McIntyre stood holding a balloon in front of a blown-up photograph of the bar to illustrate that the police version of events did not make sense.

He said Hardwick, who was standing in front of the bar with a woman when he was shot, was struck in the back of the head.

He said the medical examiner's testimony that the bullet traveled from "back to front, up to down and right to left," suggests the shooter was not in the field across the street, as presented by police, but perhaps in a vacant house next door.

Tytla rebutted that even the slightest tilt of the head could change the path of the bullet, noting that witnesses said Hardwick, who was six feet, four inches tall, was looking down and to his left at a woman who wanted him to light her cigarette.

McIntyre suggested that the jury should not believe Dishon Morgan, Ramos' best friend and "brother," who had testified he was standing with Ramos when Ramos assumed a marksman stance, used the rifle scope to get a bead on his target and pulled the trigger.

McIntyre said Morgan wrote to Ramos' sister saying, "the whole case is a lie."

"He says he was in a tight spot," McIntyre said.  "He was in jail and he was forced to tell lies."

k.florin@thedaycom

Twitter: @KFLORIN