WILMINGTON, Del. -- A jury will begin deliberations this morning to determine whether Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya will go to prison for life or walk free.
The decision is all or nothing for Malinovskaya, who is charged with the Dec. 23, 2004, murder of Temple University pharmacology student Irina Zlotnikov.
At the time of her murder, Zlotnikov was dating Malinovskaya's former boyfriend, Robert Bondar.
A verdict could be announced as early as this afternoon, Malinovskaya attorney Eugene Maurer said, as jurors may be anxious to finish the case before the weekend.
During closing arguments yesterday, Maurer said the jury's decision will ultimately boil down to "whether you believe Mr. Bondar or whether you believe Ms. Malinovskaya."
The two have consistently given contradictory accounts of the events leading up to Zlotnikov's death.
The prosecution's closing arguments aimed to discredit Malinovskaya, who admitted that she lied in earlier testimony about her whereabouts on the day of the murder.
Prosecutor Victoria Witherell presented a list of lies that the state of Delaware believes Malinovskaya has told since last December and argued that Malinovskaya was obsessed with Bondar, giving her a strong motive to commit the murder.
"Over time, [Malinovskaya's] attraction to Bondar became so strong that it became a fatal attraction," Witherell said.
Defense attorneys responded with the argument that no physical evidence links Malinovskaya to the case.
"This is a circumstantial evidence case," Maurer said. "There is not one single piece of evidence in this case where you can look at it and say, 'It grabs me right here.' We don't have a confession, we don't have an eyewitness, we don't have a murder weapon."
Maurer also pushed the jury to carefully consider what is at stake in their decision.
"Because of the importance of cases of this nature, the law requires that before you can come back and say, 'This woman committed this crime,' you must believe it beyond reasonable doubt," Maurer said. "Upon close examination, you will see there is a whole lot more than reasonable doubt."
Prior to the two sides' summaries, the defense closed its arguments and the prosecution rebutted them by calling Bondar to the stand.
Prosecutor Marsh White questioned Bondar specifically about a series of conversations between himself and Malinovskaya regarding her decision to visit him two days before Zlotnikov's death about a paper she was writing.
Bondar denied that the conversations -- which are crucial to Malinovskaya's story -- ever happened.
"I never heard any conversation and I never made any agreement to help her with a paper, especially at my apartment," Bondar said.
After the court recessed for the day, Maurer said he was satisfied with the case he presented.
"I've been doing this for so long that you never want to feel confident -- it's a jinx," Maurer said. "But I feel confident that I did everything I could have done and it went as well as it could."
He added that Malinovskaya appears innocent, and that this could work in her favor.
"She comes across as a pretty nice girl; she doesn't seem capable of something like this," he said.
