They held hushed conversations in the hallways and made alleged payoffs inside and outside the courthouse, including a $2,000 hand-off by a urinal down the hall from the judge’s office.

The schemers, prosecutors say, swirled all around state Supreme Court Justice Gerald Garson. They say a conspiracy was afoot that involved court personnel who illegally steered divorce and custody cases to a crooked judge.

Today, a Brooklyn jury continues weighing those allegations and deliberating whether court officer Louis Salerno and retired clerk Paul Sarnell took bribes to manipulate cases and bypass the court system’s random assignment system. Both men face up to seven years in prison, if convicted.

The exhaustive month-long trial gave an extensive preview of prosecutors’ evidence against Judge Garson, who is accused in a separate scheme of accepting a bribe from a lawyer.

Prosecutors say the lawyer, Paul Siminovsky, gave Judge Garson cigars, free meals and drinks in exchange for legal appointments and favors like granting adjournments.

Jurors watched a secretly taped video showing Mr. Siminovsky give the judge $1,000 cash in “referral fees.”

Still, the trial did not supply definitive answers to several key questions, including whether Judge Garson knew of his court employees’ plan to illegally steer cases to his courtroom, or whether the judge actually took a bribe to fix a case.

Although the case has been described as one of “justice for sale,” a somewhat murkier picture emerged of Judge Garson’s courtroom in the past month.

Prosecutors played a tape of the judge giving Mr. Siminovsky detailed instructions on how to handle a pending case and saying the lawyer is “a winner either way.” The judge is not charged with fixing that or any case.

Prosecutors never said the judge knew about the case-steering plan. Their key witness, Mr. Siminovsky, denied that it was necessary.

Mr. Siminovsky, who represented clients who participated in the alleged conspiracy, told jurors that he was a good lawyer and never needed to get a case before the judge.

A defense lawyer for Mr. Sarnell made a different argument yesterday. The lawyer, Dominic Amorosa, said in closing arguments that the judge told his client to take the cases and skip the random selection process. Mr. Amorosa said Judge Garson frequently made such requests.

“Sarnell would never have gone near this thing without Garson approving it,” Mr. Siminovsky told jurors.

Mr. Sarnell is accused of accepting cell phones and free plane tickets from a man who allegedly recruited divorce litigants and promised them he would win their cases by bribing Judge Garson. The man, an electronics dealer named Nissim Elmann, didn’t know the judge.

Defense lawyers yesterday spent much of their summations attacking Mr. Siminovsky, who also is the main witness against Judge Garson.

They said Mr. Siminovsky was determined to save himself from prosecution by ensnaring Messrs. Sarnell and Salerno in a crime.

“Siminovsky was trying to corrupt people,” Mr. Amorosa said.

A lawyer for Mr. Salerno, the court officer, gave a brief closing argument yesterday in which he said that his client was being “nailed to the cross” for Judge Garson’s misconduct.

The lawyer, Oliver Storch, said Mr. Siminovsky was “sent on a mission: He had to ensnare Salerno to get his get-out-of-jail free card.”

Mr. Salerno allegedly accepted $2,000 from Mr. Siminovsky at a courthouse urinal.

Mr. Storch argued yesterday there was no proof that his client actually took the bribe. He said prosecutors failed to arrange the hand-off in a place where it could be caught on video and said they never recovered the marked bills.

In a withering closing argument, Mr. Downey pointed to tapes in which Mr. Salerno asks Mr. Siminovsky to get him a DVD and VCR from Mr. Elmann.

He also questioned why Mr. Salerno had said that another clerk is “not like us” because “she’s honest.”

Mr. Downey ridiculed the idea that Mr. Siminovsky entrapped either defendant.

He cited a conversation in which Mr. Sarnell talks about bypassing the random case assignment system.

“That courtroom was corrupt from top to bottom – and they seized on it,” Assistant District Attorney Noel Downey told jurors. “They violated fairness. And for what? For profit.”