The jury was told Tuesday that it's all politics in the case of an immigration agent accused of accessing a confidential government database to help the 2006 campaign against now- Gov. Bill Ritter.

The prosecution, however, said Cory Voorhis violated the law by tracking down the information for partisan political purposes: to help Bob Beauprez's gubernatorial campaign produce a $250,000 anti-Ritter political ad.

The defense said Voorhis did nothing illegal because he had a good political purpose: forcing change on bad criminal justice policy.

Now it's up to a U.S. District Court jury to decide if Voorhis is guilty of two misdemeanors. Voorhis, an accomplished immigration agent, faces a possible penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine for each of two counts.

Both sides admitted that Voorhis accessed the National Crime Information Center database to obtain information on illegal immigrants who received plea bargains when Ritter was Denver district attorney.

Voorhis told the Beauprez campaign that an accused heroin dealer who pleaded to trespassing on farmland in Denver was the same man later arrested under a different name on a charge of sexual assault on a child in San Francisco.

The sexual assault charge was dropped, but the ad did not say that.

Without the information available through the NCIC database that the two were the same man, the Beauprez campaign had no attack ad, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Phillips. The same information was not available through public court records, he said.

"Was the purpose of that ad related to criminal justice?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney James Anderson. "No, it was one candidate throwing mud at another."

But defense attorney Patrick Ridley insisted that "the reason we are here is the absurdity of the policy" of giving plea bargains to criminal aliens. He also said Voorhis' job description includes investigations that "lead to change in laws," and that justified his actions.