HILLSBOROUGH A 10-woman, two-man jury began deliberations today in the case against a Durham man accused of tying up three drunken UNC-Chapel Hill football players and attempting to rob them of wallets, video games, electronic equipment.

Michael Troy Lewis, 32, is on trial in Orange County Superior Court on first-degree charges of kidnapping, robbery with a dangerous weapon and conspiracy to kidnap and rob. Instructing jurors today, Judge Carl Fox did not mention sexual battering, which at one point was part of the conspiracy charge against Lewis.

The charges were filed after the December incident, in which police were called to a Chapel Hill apartment where they found two of the players in their boxer shorts and bound with belts, shoelaces and sound system wires. The third player was found fully clothed, with his arms and feet bound.

The News & Observer is not naming two of the players who reported that they were sexually assaulted. The paper generally does not identify people who report sexual assault.

In closing arguments this morning, Russell Holler, the defense lawyer representing Lewis, urged jurors to notice the many inconsistencies in the players' accounts during prior court hearings and police reports.

"They're not just minor inconsistencies," Holler said. "If they don't fit in with what the state says, that's reasonable doubt."

Holler argued that the police didn't know exactly what happened that night because they weren't at the apartment. The players, who were intoxicated at the time, did not know exactly what happened either, he argued.

"If they can't be sure," Holler told the jury, "y'all can't be sure."

Before the closing arguments this morning, the jury asked to take another look at a videotape of Lewis talking with a Chapel Hill police officer several days after the incident.

Lewis turned himself in to police, unaware that arrest warrants had been drawn up charging him in the incident.

In that tape, Lewis said that he and two women had gone to Chapel Ridge Apartments with one of the football players after meeting him at the East End Martini Bar. Lewis told the officer the player had invited him and the two women back to his home.

"He wanted to do a foursome and be tied up," Lewis told the officer.

The players started a party on Dec. 16 at Chapel Ridge Apartments to celebrate one of the group's 21st birthday. They continued the party shortly before midnight at Top of the Hill, a restaurant and bar in downtown Chapel Hill, The three continued the drinking into the early hours of the next day at East End Martini Bar further east on Franklin Street.

At the martini bar one player drifted away from the other two, according to testimony, and encountered two women and Lewis.

The player persuaded the three to give him a ride home to Chapel Ridge, according to testimony. That player testified that he blacked out on the way home and regained consciousness in his bedroom. The player said he was in a chair with his arms bound, his eyes blindfolded and a woman straddling him. The other two players arrived at Chapel Ridge Apartments shortly after 3 a.m.

Lowell Dyer, a football center celebrating his birthday, went to his bedroom and collapsed face down on his bed, fully clothed. He did not report a sexual assault.

The other player made his way further into the apartment and testified that he encountered Lewis standing naked in the hallway with a knife.

Lewis told the man his teammate was in the bedroom with two women and he could join them. The new arrival testified that he went into the room, where the larger of the two women took off his shirt and pushed him onto the bed. At some point, the player said the woman and Lewis bound his arms with a belt and blindfolded him with a necktie.

As this went on, the players testified, Lewis moved through the apartment, still naked, collecting video games, a laptop and other entertainment equipment to steal.

Lewis later told a police officer that, indeed, he was filling a book bag with items he planned to take from the players.

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