CHICAGO – Attorneys for a white supremacist leader charged with trying to have a federal judge killed urged jurors Wednesday to look beyond his hateful rhetoric and scrutinize the prosecution’s evidence, particularly tapes recorded by an FBI informant.

Matthew Hale, 32, is charged with soliciting the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who had ruled against him in a trademark lawsuit.

The case against Hale has been “an appeal to passion and prejudice,” defense attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin said in closing arguments, pleading with jurors to give Hale a fair verdict despite “the venom he spews.”

Lefkow, who was never attacked, ordered Hale in 2002 to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because the words were trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that had no ties to Hale and rejects his views. Prosecutors say Hale was furious after Lefkow’s ruling and urged his bodyguard to kill the judge.