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FORT MYERS — When jurors begin their third day of deliberations in the Gateway murder trial, they’ll have more time and more space — a whole courtroom of it — in which they can pore over transcripts and examine evidence. By 9 a.m. Thursday, when jurors return from their sequestered stay at a local hotel, Courtroom G will have been turned into a large jury room, with all the phones unplugged and all the small windows looking into the room blacked out.

That will be a switch from the cramped jury room where jurors have spent about 12 hours so far, but whether the change of scene leads to a change in pace in the jury’s deliberations remains to be seen.

The hotel where the jurors have been staying without access to phones or television is booked for another night, and Judge Thomas Reese said that reservations could be extended if the jury needs to continue its work yet another day.

The question is whether they will come to a unanimous verdict as they weigh whether Fred Cooper, 30, is guilty.

One local attorney says the longer the jury deliberates, the question of whether they can come to an agreement comes into play. Wilbur Smith, who has tried dozens of murder trials in Lee County, said local judges don’t normally like to keep a jury more than three days.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a hung jury,” Smith said. “They have been out long enough it could be a hung jury and it definitely has to be taken into consideration.”

Cooper is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in the deaths of Steven and Michelle Andrews in their Gateway home in December 2005.

If Cooper is convicted of those charges, he could face either life in prison or the death penalty. If that happened, jurors would meet again to decide which penalty to recommend to the judge.

Smith had previously said “the stars are lined up against the defense.”

He said that all of the dynamics make it hard for the defense. Smith pointed to the fact that Cooper deviated from his original testimony. This added to the fact that the gruesome and atrocious nature of the crime doesn’t help his cause.

“Juries don’t like to acquit in these cases,” Smith said. “All the evidence against him becomes very compelling.”

Michael Hornung, a local attorney who worked for six years as a prosecutor, said the length of the jury’s deliberation to this point shows that the attorneys selected an intelligent jury.

“You have a very cautious jury in that they want to hear, review and analyze all of the evidence, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and making sure everyone in the jury room is heard before the verdict is given,” Hornung said.

After being in court for all of the testimony, the families of the Andrewses have not been in the courtroom as the jury has deliberated.

So far, jurors have spent portions of two days in a small, fifth floor jury room puzzling over a decision in this double-murder case.

The jurors — four men and eight women — occasionally knocked on the door to be let back into the courtroom, coming with requests and questions, perhaps hinting where their deliberations were leading them.

Those knocks were unexpected enough that at one point, Cooper, who is asked to remove his dress clothes each time he leaves the courtroom, hadn’t had a chance to put on his tie.

Smith said when jurors ask for certain parts of the testimony, it can mean that one of them is trying to make a point. Hornung didn’t believe the jury’s questions confirm the education process and this doesn’t mean this is a runaway jury.

Late in the afternoon, jurors came in with a request to hear excerpts from the testimony of several witnesses, including from Harry Balke, a crime scene manager, and from Gabriele Suboch, a crime scene technician. They had wanted to hear again about how hard it would have been to squeeze two people into the backseat of the Andrewses’ cars.

When Cooper took the stand in his defense, he testified that he had sex with Michelle Andrews in her car in the driveway of her home the night before her body was found.

Jurors had also wanted to hear from Colin Baird, a friend of one of the Andrewses’ neighbors. Baird was one of three teenagers who testified that he saw a strange man in the Gateway neighborhood about 11 p.m. on Dec. 26, 2005. Baird was 14 at the time, and he testified that he saw the man for a few seconds.

They would have been able to have the entire testimony from those witnesses replayed for them, Reese said, but transcripts weren’t available. The judge said that isn’t in the court’s budget.

Hearing that, jurors requested instead to hear two tapes of Cooper’s interviews with detectives on the night of Dec. 27, 2005.

In those interviews, he denies ever going to Gateway the night before and he denies knowing about his girlfriend’s affair with Steven Andrews.

At one point he says: “I know where I was and I wasn’t in Gateway.”

In his testimony Monday, though, Cooper said he had lied to detectives about those things, but he said it was only to protect his relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Kellie Ballew.

Other than to listen to those tapes and request breaks, jurors spent their time in a room with just a table, a water cooler and a door to a bathroom in it. Only 10 chairs fit easily around the conference room table, and the chairs aren’t as large or comfortable as the black cushioned seats that they had as they heard six days’ worth of testimony from witnesses.

The judge acknowledged quarters were tight in the room; he said he hoped the new arrangements for Thursday would be more comfortable.

Jurors were taken to their hotel shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, ending deliberations for the day. Two alternate jurors — who sat through the trial — remain sequestered as well, in case they are needed.

Staff writer Tom Hanson contributed to this story.