The 12-member federal jury deliberated about an hour yesterday afternoon after getting instructions from U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis about how to apply the relevant law to the facts of the case against Street and codefendant John H. Velardi Sr.

The jury is to return at 9 a.m. today to the federal courthouse in Center City to resume deliberations.

The 2006 indictment alleges that Street, 68, of Moorestown, failed to pay taxes on $2 million worth of consulting fees and income not derived from his $30,000-a-year food-vending business between 2000 and 2004. He also did not file a tax return in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the indictment alleges.

In addition to the tax charges against him, Street and Velardi, 54, of Media, are charged with wire and mail fraud in an alleged 2003 scheme to defraud a Vietnamese businessman of $80,000 by selling him the rights to a $3.2 million airport maintenance subcontract that prosecutors say Street and Velardi knew did not exist.

Yesterday morning, the jurors heard three hours of closing arguments by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anthony Wzorek and Jennifer Arbittier Williams; Street's attorney, Jeremy H.G. Ibrahim, and Velardi attorney Guy Sciolla.

In a brief 15-minute closing, Ibrahim referred to the two hours of testimony Street gave last Thursday, in which he admitted he did not not file tax returns in 2002, 2003 and 2004, cast doubts about the validity of the U.S. Tax Code, and admitted trading on his name and family relationship in 2000 after his younger brother, John F. Street, was elected to his first term as Philadelphia's mayor.

"You may not like everything you have heard when you listened to what Mr. Street testified to," Ibrahim told the jury.

"But this is not a trial about morality," Ibrahim added. "What is before you is whether you believe each element or each count. You must believe with a reasonable certainty that the government has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt."

Wzorek described Street's new-found identity as a tax resister as a cynical attempt to get around the fact that Street knew he would owe taxes on more than $2 million in consulting fees he had earned.

Wzorek said that Street spent $50,000 on a car, $3,500 on a sport jacket, and thousands more for jewelry and wagering on horse races.

Sciolla told the jury that Velardi, facilities director for Philadelphia Airport Services, the key maintenance contractor at Philadelphia International Airport, was just a "corporate middle manager" caught between Street's schemes and businessman Thanh Nguyen, who desperately wanted to take over an airport subcontract.

Prosecution witnesses testified that Street and Velardi wanted to assign the airport subcontract to Nguyen and his V-Tech Services Inc. to recoup money Street owed PAS.

The government, however, alleged that the rights to the subcontract between PAS and Street's Notlim Inc. were no longer Street's to sell. In June 2003, airport officials had canceled the Notlim subcontract after Mayor Street ordered his older brother to withdraw from the deal because it appeared inappropriate. Prosecutors say the former mayor was not involved in his brother's alleged crimes.

Nguyen testified Feb. 11 that after he paid Street $80,000, the assignment of the subcontract kept getting postponed, and Street and Velardi stopped returning his calls.

Sciolla cited Nguyen's six-figure gambling losses as a motive for seeking the airport deal. But Sciolla also said Nguyen, a trained aerospace engineer, was too savvy a businessman to be the immigrant naif prosecutors made him out to be. "This guy is a rocket scientist. This guy is no dummy," Sciolla told the jury.

Sciolla argued that municipal contracts that rotate with a change in administrations were a fact of life in Philadelphia politics: "It's not illegal. It may be unsavory, but that is the way business is done."