By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Raymond Samson had to wait at least one more day to learn the outcome of his trial.

Jurors spent almost four hours Thursday deciding whether Samson is guilty on 18 counts of sex-related crimes before the judge sent them home. They are expected to resume deliberations this morning.

Prosecutors took three days to make their case against Samson. His lawyer, Leonard Sharon, called no witnesses nor presented any evidence Thursday. Samson declined to testify.

On the morning of Samson’s fourth day in Androscoggin County Superior Court, lawyers on both sides made closing arguments before handing the case over to the jury.

In her closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Deborah Cashman walked the jury through each of the 18 counts, methodically tying together witness statements and photographs showing nude boys and a girl who lived at his Webster Street home.

She named each of the six alleged victims, all minors who testified against Samson, and how the 18 acts he is charged with were connected to them.

The charges include Samson having minors posing in the nude for pictures or movies, touching their private parts and engaging in oral sex with them.

During the trial, the jury watched a videotape by Samson of two naked boys playing in his backyard pool. The boys identified Samson as the cameraman and his voice could be heard shouting directions. Cashman said the movie revealed Samson’s control over the kids and showed how he had conditioned them to respond to his commands.

He groomed them over a period of months, and in some cases years, to acquiesce to his sexual appetites, she said. At first they resisted. But, she said, they relented after he wore them down by repeated requests.

“They were confused,” she said. “But each one told you they really didn’t want to do it.”

It doesn’t matter that they eventually gave in, she said. “It’s not up to these boys to say, ‘Yes’ or ‘No,'” she said.

Each of the six witnesses corroborated the others’ account of events, she said.

Not true, defense lawyer Sharon told the jury in his closing remarks.

There were discrepancies between the witnesses’ descriptions and chronology; there were inconsistencies within their own stories, he said.

“That’s reasonable doubt,” he told jurors.

His client was a lonely old man, drunk most of the time, who opened his home to kids, he said. He let them play in his pool, watch his TV and use his computer, the lawyer said. He let them drink alcohol and experiment with each other sexually, Sharon said.

“He let things go on that no parent would allow to go on,” he said. “But you can’t convict him of a crime because of that.”

With 18 counts against Samson, most of them with names that “sound repulsive,” it’s tempting to think he must be guilty of something, Sharon said.

“You can dislike Mr. Samson,” Sharon said. But his client can only be convicted on the evidence, he said.

Lewiston police and Cashman took the kids’ accounts of events as “gospel” and never considered that the kids might have taken the photos and committed sex acts without Samson’s knowledge, Sharon said.

“Do you think for one second the kids are going to tell their parents or tell the police, ‘Yes, we ran around naked on our own?'” Sharon said.

Even after Samson’s alleged bad behavior, the kids kept returning to his home, Sharon said.

“Human beings who are abused … don’t usually go back over and over and over again,” he said.

Samson is being held without bail pending the outcome of his trial. If he is found guilty on all 18 counts, he faces a maximum penalty of more than 70 years in prison.