The newspaper had a nice photo last week of Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas testifying in Superior Court in the Narragansett Indian smoke shop case.

But it was a sorry sight too. On ceremonial occasions this same man dons a handsome feather headdress that befits the leader of a sovereign nation. Yet here in Judge Susan McGuirl’s courtroom, he is accused, along with six other tribe members, of being a common criminal.

Thomas told me he was not ashamed. “I’m here because we stood up for what we believed in and we’ve got to defend it.”

He said he floats between two worlds and tries not to allow history to eat away at him. “There are days when I ride up to Colt State Park, there are days when I ride down to Point Judith and look at the ocean, and realize once upon a time our chief sachems ruled over that and we ruled it all. … I realize that the world has changed, that there’s no turning the clock back, but all we’re trying to do is get people to understand who we are, what we are, allow us to be self-sufficient and, in trying to do that, we just keep battling.”

I like Thomas, but it’s not for me to decide if the Indians assaulted state police, resisted arrest, or engaged in disorderly conduct during the July 14, 2003, raid that closed down the smoke shop.

In fact, I found the whole idea of the smoke shop disgusting: by selling cheaper, untaxed cigarettes, the tribe not only was undermining the state treasury but also was making smoking more appealing, the kind of thing that could hasten deaths.

But as for whether the police Governor Carcieri sent in acted properly or used excessive force is a matter of evidence, argument and law.

Yesterday’s summations by defense and prosecution lawyers offered quite the clash. (For me it was a special challenge to follow along. As a political reporter I’m used to 30-second sound bites. Defense lawyer William Devereaux spoke for 2 hours and 25 minutes, on top of an hour by another defense lawyer, Kevin Bristow. By contrast, prosecutor Maria Deaton, at only 47 minutes, was a model of concision.)

Devereaux painstakingly flashed photos and excerpts of videos as he argued in exhaustive detail that the pictures contradicted police testimony and upheld the Indians’ innocence. He also passionately asserted that the purpose of the raid was to “humiliate” the tribe and the police used thug-like tactics, including a German shepherd.

“If that is normal police behavior,” Devereaux said at one point, “I’m in the wrong country.”

But even as I listened to him, I wondered if he was overwhelming the jurors.

Prosecutor Deaton’s relative brevity may have been smarter. She was much more selective than either Devereaux or Bristow in which images she flashed on the screen. And her arguments were simpler and might be easier for the jury to accept, especially if they have a high regard for the state police.

She said of the defense lawyers, “They can say ‘excessive force’ until they’re blue in the face [but] the state police did not use excessive force.”

She urged the jurors, “Trust yourself. Trust your eyes.”

If only it were that easy! You can look at one photo or a second or two of a video and think you see something; look at an image from just a few seconds later and see something else. Or, indeed, look at the very same image and interpret it two different ways.

McGuirl instructs the jurors today and then the case is in their hands. I don’t envy them.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com