Twelve Virgin Islanders are deciding whether to convict Calvert White, the former Sports, Parks and Recreation commissioner, and Benjamin Hendricks, his alleged accomplice, on charges of wire fraud and bribery.

The jury began deliberating at approximately 1:37 p.m. Thursday after hearing closing arguments from the U.S. Justice Department and from White and Hendricks’s respective attorneys, Clive Rivers and Darren John-Baptiste.

Over the course of a week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Conley said during closing, jurors had “delved deep” into the world of greed, corruption and backroom deals. Conley said White had a duty to the people of the Virgin Islands but that, unfortunately, it wasn’t worth much, “as his loyalty could be bought for $16,000.”

Conley rehashed the timeline of events that led White and Hendricks to be indicted by a federal grand jury in January for allegedly soliciting a bribe equal to one percent of a federally funded $1.6 million contract to install surveillance equipment at DSPR facilities across the territory.

 During a December 28, 2023 phone call recorded by the government’s cooperating witness, David Whitaker, White could be heard asking Whitaker if he had talked to Hendricks about “that situation.” Whitaker said he hadn’t yet.

At the time, Whitaker was the owner of Mon Ethos Pro Support, a company that provided surveillance services.

“OK you gonna need to have that conversation and you need to do it sooner than later OK,” White said.

“That call is how the scheme unfolded,” Conley told jurors Thursday, with Hendricks as the “middleman, helper, aider and abetter.”

John-Baptiste argued that there had clearly been conversations between Whitaker, White and Hendricks prior to that call in December, declaring that “something is missing” from the government’s timeline of alleged criminality. On the stand earlier this week, Whitaker acknowledged having known White and Hendricks prior to alerting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to their scheme, and Whitaker was already working with the FBI as a cooperating witness in the agency’s investigation into former Police Commissioner Ray Martinez and Management and Budget Director Jenifer O’Neal.

Conley also reminded jurors of a Jan. 2, 2024 conversation between the trio at the VIPD’s mobile command center during the Crucian Christmas Festival, during which White was heard showing Whitaker confidential bid documents from rival bidders and telling them not to take pictures.

“I have seen people lose a job, seen people gone to jail over something like this,” White said. “I’ve been doing this a while, and I know the less evidence you have, the better you’ll be. So I hope you all got a photographic memory because I want you to take a look at this document.”

“Does this sound like someone who is ‘duped’ to you?” Conley asked the jury, anticipating renewed claims from the defendants that Whitaker — a convicted felon whom Rivers repeatedly called a “con man of the highest class” — had entrapped them.

John-Baptiste pointed to Whitaker’s own testimony this week in which he admitted to planting listening devices in government offices, claiming it was at then-Commissioner Martinez’s behest, which he then “discovered” after being hired by the VIPD to sweep the buildings.

“That’s what his modus operandi is,” John-Baptiste said. “That’s what he does.”

Throughout the trial, the prosecution made no secret of Whitaker’s extensive criminal history, which included working with law enforcement in exchange for a dramatically reduced sentence in a sting operation against search giant Google. John-Baptiste noted that Whitaker “has felled greater people than who we have here in the courtroom.”

“He’s a criminal. He’s a felon several times over,” Conley acknowledged, adding that he was presented to jurors “warts and all.” Conley told jurors that they didn’t have to like Whitaker to accept his testimony, and he and trial attorney Alexandre Dempsey noted that Whitaker’s checkered past was precisely why the government “flooded” the courtroom with audio recordings, text messages and bank statements in making their case against White and Hendricks.

“He’s still not likable,” Conley said of Whitaker, “but his testimony fits with the other evidence.”

After the parties presented their arguments, U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney gave jurors their instructions. After they were discharged to begin deliberations, Kearney denied the defendants’ request to dismiss the case on the grounds that the prosecution had not met the burden of proof. Though some pieces of evidence could be open to interpretation, Kearney said, a jury could reasonably decide to convict White and Hendricks.

By 5 p.m., the jury had yet to reach a verdict. This story will be updated.