Roundup: Jury convicts former "The Shield" actor Michael Jace second-degree murder

Former television series "The Shield" actor Michael Jace was convicted of second-degree murder by jury on Tuesday for shooting his wife in front of their two young children in their Hyde Park home in 2014.

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours over the course of two days before reaching the verdict. The jury also found true an allegation that Jace personally used a handgun, meaning he faces up to 40 years to life in prison when he is sentenced June 10.

Michael Jace, an actor who portrayed a Los Angeles police officer on the television series "The Shield," shot his wife three times, once in the back and then twice in the legs on May 19, 2014, at the home the couple shared with their sons in the Hyde Park area of Los Angeles.

The final shots were delivered in a hallway of the couple's home, within sight of their sons, who were aged 8 and 5 at the time, through the defense attorney Jamon Hicks questioned whether the actor would have premeditated the shooting knowing that the children would be there. Hicks said Jace simply snapped and was guilty only of voluntary manslaughter.

Jurors spent one hour in deliberations Friday before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry sent them home for the day. They returned at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning and indicated they had reached a verdict about an hour later.

The prosecutor told the six-man, six-woman panel last week that the testimony from the couple's 10-year-old son "tells you it was premeditated." The 10-year-old boy, Nehemiah, testified Wednesday that he saw his father bring his 40-year-old mother into a hallway, where she fell down.

"Then my dad said, 'If you like running, run to heaven,' and then he shot her," the boy told the jury.

In an interview with police after his wife's death, Jace told police that he "wanted her to feel some pain" because she was a runner, the prosecutor noted.

Jace also told police he didn't know his wife was dead when he spoke to detectives after the shooting, the transcript shows. Jace said he had planned to kill himself with a revolver that belonged to his wife's father but didn't have the courage and instead wanted to harm his wife.

In an audio-recorded interview played for the jury, Jace told police that he was holding the gun when his wife returned home from a baseball game with their sons but that she didn't immediately notice the firearm.

He told police that she lunged at him, he pushed her away and she spun around before the shooting. "I was just angry," Jace told investigators. "All I intended to do was to shoot her in the leg," not kill her.

The prosecutor noted that Jace also believed his wife April Jace, a financial aid counselor at Biola University, was having an affair. April denied she was cheating in text messages sent to her husband before she was killed.

The prosecutor said the couple exchanged 164 text messages the day of the shooting, telling jurors that Jace's wife wrote one text message that she was "afraid to come home" and that her husband had engaged in "trickery to make her believe he wasn't home."

"He's obsessed with her ... He finally controls her to heaven," the prosecutor told jurors.

"I just ruined lives," Jace told detectives. "Four lives." He has been jailed since the shooting and hasn't shown any emotion during the trial that started last Monday.

Jace has also appeared in some films as "Forrest Gump", "Boogie Nights" and "Planet of the Apes." Endit