PROVIDENCE — The fate of Gilbert Delestre, accused of murder in the death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew, now sits in the hands of the jury.

In Superior Court yesterday, lawyers rested their case in Delestre’s trial for the death of Thomas “T.J.” Wright and gave closing arguments. Judge Netti C. Vogel was expected to instruct the jury this morning.

In his closing arguments, Robert Mann, Delestre’s lawyer, tried to poke holes in babysitter Kayla Roderick’s testimony and place a larger share of the blame for T.J.’s death on Katherine Bunnell, suggesting it could have been Bunnell who threw T.J. across a room.

He said that Delestre had committed an act of courage by admitting he hit T.J. and caused him to fall down the stairs, but Delestre did not intend to and did not deserve to be convicted of murder. He is charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy.

Delestre and Bunnell were accused of beating T.J. so severely after returning to their Woonsocket apartment from a night out Oct. 30, 2004, and finding a mess in the living room that the toddler was declared brain dead and died the next day. Bunnell is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after being convicted in May of second-degree murder and conspiracy.

Roderick, the babysitter, testified that when the couple returned home, they took turns beating the child. She said she turned to see T.J. flying through the air from Delestre’s direction.

Mann challenged Roderick’s sequence of events that night.

“She says she doesn’t hear [Delestre] say anything until T.J. is flying through the air. It doesn’t make sense. Gilbert goes upstairs. He comes downstairs. He doesn’t say anything. All of a sudden, then he grabs T.J. and throws him. Kayla says she sees his arms outstretched. We know Kayla is closer to Katherine than Gilbert,” Mann said.

Mann said Bunnell was in a screaming rage that night and dropped T.J. at the bottom of the stairs, hit him in the chest and back, slapped him across the face four times as if she were slapping an adult and then dragged him on the floor and poured milk on his head.

Mann, pointing to two written statements Roderick made to the police, said she wrote that T.J. was first thrown across the room and then milk was poured on his head. She later corrected the sequence of events. “It’s much more plausible that [Katherine] throws T.J., and then pours milk on him,” Mann said.

“The crux of this case is what happened in that home. If the child was thrown, it makes more sense to think it was Katherine, not Gilbert,” Mann said.

Mann said, “There is no dispute that Gilbert lied to everybody about what he did that night. He lied about something that he was very ashamed of doing. Delestre struck T.J. and he fell down the stairs and he tried to catch him. That fits with manslaughter,” Mann said.

“He had the courage to come here to this courtroom to stand up and say he struck T.J. and he tumbled down the stairs,” he said.

Mann asked the jury to find Delestre guilty of manslaughter.

Prosecutor Scott Erickson lambasted Mann’s description of Delestre’s confession as courageous in his closing argument. “If that’s the measure of courage to stand up in the courtroom and lie to people, that is a world I don’t want to live in. He has come before you to get himself out of trouble. This is not manslaughter, this is first-degree murder case.”

Erickson said Roderick testified that on the night Delestre and Bunnell came home, Delestre went straight upstairs and she heard two slaps and T.J. crying. “Think of malice. It already begins to form in his mind. He already knew who he was going to get. He was pissed off because T. J. made a mess on the rug,” Erickson said.

“It was 3 a.m. and the toddler was awakened and assaulted,” he said. “All they had to do was clean up the mess and go to bed, and we wouldn’t be here,” he said.

“This man picked this 32-pound child up and threw him across the room. It’s something he started when he went upstairs and something he continued,” Erickson said. “There is certainly a fair inference for you to make that the beating did not end when Katherine Bunnell and Kayla Roderick left the house.”

tpina@projo.com