WASHINGTON (AP)—Oliver North’s lawyer, in an emotional final argument Wednesday, portrayed the former White House aide as a sacrificial lamb, a scapegoat and a hostage, and implored jurors in his trial to “set him free.”

“Oliver North never wanted to be a hero,” said Brendan Sullivan. “He just wants to go home.”

But prosecutor John Keker, having the last word, asked the jury to “return a verdict of guilty in each and every one of the 12 charges.”

With that, the nine women and three men who will decide North’s fate were sent home. They will return Thursday to begin their deliberations after instructions from U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell. During deliberation, the jury will be sequestered for the first time since the Iran-Contra trial began.

In his hour-long rebuttal, Keker said it had been an “unhappy, unpleasant, miserable criminal trial,” and dismissed Sullivan’s closing argument with a Shakesperian touch: “It was all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“You have heard a lot about courage at this trial,” Keker said. “There’s another kind of courage: courage to admit when you are wrong, courage to admit personal responsibility, courage to admit guilt where appropriate. He (North) has not admitted any of those things; it’s time for you to do it for him.”

It was the end of two tough days for North, a former Marine lieutenant colonel whose power while he was at the National Security Council was substantial. His face paled and he busied himself with writing while Keker denounced him; he looked at the jury while Sullivan pleaded for him.

“The government has not shown criminal behavior,” Sullivan said. “The man who held the lives of others in his hands, now puts his life into yours.” The reference was to North’s protecting names of people he dealt with by shredding or altering documents, which Sullivan saw as “a reasonable thing to do.”

Keker had another explanation: “He was destroying documents deliberately so they wouldn’t find what he didn’t want them to find.”

After the arguments, North’s mood brightened and he joined his wife, who was speaking with a minister in the front row of spectators.

Sullivan, choked with emotion throughout much of his three-hour closing argument, mentioned President Reagan’s telephone call on the day North was fired, a call in which the president called North “a national hero,” and also a postcard North got from then-Vice President Bush thanking him for his work.

“All these people who went to Ollie North for help, where are they now?” Sullivan asked.

Summing up North’s defense in the trial’s 12th week, Sullivan said he had done his job well as a White House aide, following superiors’ orders to help the Nicaraguan rebels, then was thrown overboard as Reagan sought to escape political heat over the affair.

Sullivan told the jury that North, who had worked to free American hostages in Lebanon, has been, in a sense, a hostage himself.

“I ask you, on the evidence, to set him free,” said Sullivan.

In the spectator section, behind North at the defense table, were his wife and three of his four children. Betsy North had been at the trial before, but it was a first for the children. During a recess, North took their youngest daughter by the hand and walked with her down the courtroom corridor.

North is charged with 12 criminal counts, including lying to Congress and the attorney general, illegally converting traveler’s checks to his own use and conspiring to defraud the Treasury through a tax scam to support the rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government. If convicted, he could receive prison terms totaling 60 years and fines of $3 million.