Closing arguments in the federal racketeering trial of Ethan "Malu" Motta and Rodney Joseph Jr., lasted all day yesterday and will continue again this morning.

Prosecutor Thomas Brady, aided by a Power Point presentation of witness photos and quotes from trial testimony, spoke for nearly two hours, telling jurors the case was "about greed, about control, about violence."

Motta's lawyer Charles Carnesi, a New York attorney who specializes in federal racketeering law, attacked the legal basis for the government's case, telling the jury that because the government had not met its "very unique and heavy burden" to tie the defendants into a racketeering enterprise, the other charges against them, including murder, robbery and extortion, must fail.

Joseph's lawyer, Reginald Minn, made a similar summation, arguing that his client may have been squeezing operators of illegal gambling games for protection money, but he wasn't part of the of a "racketeering enterprise" that centered on actual financing and control of the games.

U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway began the day by taking more than an hour to read dozens of pages of instructions to the jury on the complexities of the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) law and other matters.

Brady, who will give a 45-minute rebuttal argument to the defense arguments today, told the jury that Motta and Joseph were inextricably tied into the corrupt gambling enterprise headed here in 2003 and 2004 by Kai Ming Wang, an immigrant from China.

When members of their protection crew at a Kalakaua Avenue game room switched allegiances to a rival group in early January 2004, Motta, Joseph and co-defendant Kevin "Pancho" Gonsalves arranged a meeting with the former employees on the afternoon of Jan. 7 at the parking lot of the Pali municipal golf course, Brady said.

The defendants shot Lepo Utu Taliese, 44, and Romilius Corpuz Jr., 40, to death at the golf course and seriously wounded a third man, Tinoimalu Sao, Brady said.

Gonsalves earlier pleaded guilty in the case and is now serving a 27 1/2-year prison sentence.

Brady called it an "ambush" that resulted in the deaths of two men and the near-death of a third. None of the victims was armed.

He said the reason for the murders was "to teach the competition a lesson, to send them a message and to let everybody else know that they were the only game in town."

Carnesi, whose client list includes John Gotti Jr., son of New York Mafia family boss John Gotti, tried to poke holes in the prosecution case by belittling the credibility of government witnesses, many of whom are prison inmates or who are targets of pending criminal investigations. But his main attack came on the RICO underpinning of the government case.

"This is not a RICO case," he said.

The trial belonged in state court where it would be prosecuted as a standard murder and case, Carnesi said, accusing the government of "trying to force the facts to make it seem like an (illegal) enterprise."

And, because the government failed to to prove the RICO elements of the crime, the jury must acquit the defendants of all the charges contained in the indictment, he said.

Defense lawyer Minn made much the same argument, and he also told the jury that Joseph didn't shoot anybody at the golf course.

Ballistics evidence showed that three guns were used in the killings but that same evidence and the testimony of eyewitnesses at the golf course should convince jurors that Gonsalves used two .380-caliber guns and Motta had the third weapon, a silenced .22-caliber handgun, Minn said.