KELSO, Wash. (AP) - Frederick Russell was compared to the main character in the movie "The Fugitive" by his attorney, who asked jurors Monday to not consider Russell's flight to Ireland a sign of guilt and to acquit his client on charges of killing three university students and injuring three others in a car wreck.

Prosecutor Lana Weinmann countered that "this isn't Hollywood. This is the real world."

Jurors began deliberating the case Monday afternoon, after hearing Russell's defense attorney, Francisco Duarte, cite the 1993 movie during his closing arguments. The film was about a prominent doctor unjustly accused and convicted of killing his wife, and who fled after he was convicted, trying to find a one-armed man who committed the crime.

Russell, 28, is on trial for three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of vehicular assault. He's accused of being drunk, speeding, and trying to pass in a no-passing zone when his vehicle was involved in a crash June 4, 2001, on State Route 270, the highway between the two college towns of Pullman, Wash., and Moscow, Idaho.

Killed in the crash were Brandon Clements, 22, of Wapato, a Washington State University senior; and fellow WSU students Stacy Morrow, 21, of Milton, and Ryan Sorensen, 21, of Westport. Three others were badly injured.

Russell was on the U.S. Marshals Service's "Most Wanted" list after he fled to Ireland following his arrest and release in 2001. He was found in 2005 and later extradited to the United States.

Duarte said that death threats and the fear he wouldn't receive a fair trial were the only reasons Russell fled.

"What is a 21-year-old man who becomes public enemy No. 1 overnight supposed to do when he knows he's not going to get a fair trial?" Duarte asked. "In Eastern Washington, he is the devil."

Duarte called in question the credibility of Russell's blood alcohol level results, and blamed the accident on a prosecution witness, the driver who prosecutors said Russell first passed before the crash. Duarte called into question Robert Hart's role in the accident, saying that he fled the scene, took hours to call 911 and fabricated what happened that evening.

During his testimony last month, Hart said he pulled over to let Russell pass just seconds before the fatal collision. During his cross-examination, Duarte suggested that Hart immediately veered back onto the road after pulling over to let Russell pass.

Duarte spent much of Monday's closing arguments trying to cast doubt on Hart.

"Is Robert Hart really telling you the truth?" he asked.

Weinmann, an assistant state attorney general helping to prosecute the case, responded in her closing arguments: "There is no one-armed man and Mr. Hart certainly isn't the one-armed man in this scenario.

"There is no mystery about what happened that night because the evidence against the defendant is overwhelming."

Earlier in the day, Weinmann recounted for jurors how Russell had been drinking vodka at a party earlier on the night of the crash, and then went to a bar where he continued to drink and play pool.

She lined up six shot glasses, one by one, plunking them down on a small round table in front of a bottle of vodka to show the equivalent of the amount of alcohol he still had in his system three hours after the accident.

At a hospital after the crash, Russell's blood-alcohol level measured .128 percent, well above Washington state's intoxication threshold of 0.08.

"The defendant needs to hear from you that when your actions and the choices you make kill innocent people, that you don't get to run from the law, you get held accountable under the law," she said.

But Duarte said the results can't be trusted because records showing Russell's blood alcohol level immediately after the wreck were based on blood samples since destroyed by the state crime lab.

Prosecutors told jurors there is no question about who was responsible for the accident.

"The defendant chose to drink far too much alcohol that night and he chose to get behind the wheel of a car, and set in motion the chain of events that destroyed so many lives," Weinmann said.

Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier is presiding over the trial, moved to southwest Washington's Cowlitz County from Whitman County in southeast Washington because of extensive news coverage.