Jurors at the first federal death penalty trial in East Tennessee took less than four hours to convict a man in the 2003 abduction and slaying of an Atlanta restaurant owner.

The jury returned the verdict Monday, finding Rejon Taylor, 24, guilty of murder during the hijacking of a vehicle and murder during a kidnapping.

Taylor was charged in the Aug. 6, 2003, shooting of Guy Luck on a rural roadside near Chattanooga after Luck was abducted in his van from his home in Atlanta. Taylor showed no sign of emotion as the verdict was read.

The same jury will return on Sept. 16 for sentencing. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, but jurors could instead issue a sentence of life in prison with no chance for parole.

Defense attorney Howell Clements told jurors in a closing argument that Luck, 51, was shot in the van when he tried to wrestle a gun away from one of Taylor’s two co-defendants. Prosecutors told jurors that Taylor fired the shot that fatally wounded Luck.

Clements said after the verdict that a long list of mitigating factors will be presented as evidence at the sentencing, such as Taylor’s “childhood, lack of opportunity, lack of guidance.” He declined to elaborate.

Defense attorneys said they expect their part of the sentencing will take more than a week. Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier that they will need at least two days.

Clements said the length of deliberation Monday — just under four hours — was no indicator for the sentencing.

“That’s a whole new ball game,” he said.

The case is the first federal death penalty trial in the eastern district of Tennessee. No federal court jury in Tennessee has sentenced a defendant to death, according to representatives of federal prosecutors in Memphis and Nashville.

Jurors returned the verdict after Clements told them the shooting was a “spontaneous ruckus,” not a planned killing. He said prosecutors failed to prove that the shooting involved “intent to kill.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Neff told jurors that a series of burglaries and identity thefts by Taylor in Luck’s upscale neighborhood in the years before the abduction-slaying put the owner of the Violette restaurant on a “road to death.”

Prosecutors contend Taylor knew Luck was a witness in a burglary and identity theft case against him and wanted to get rid of the restaurant owner.

Co-defendants Joey Marshall and Sir Jack Matthews have pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and testified for the government.

Matthews last week surprised prosecutors while testifying when he changed his story and described the victim as a drug-dealing pedophile and homosexual who had willingly gone with them to Tennessee to deliver marijuana. He testified Luck attacked them and they shot him in self defense.

Prosecutors described that testimony as “disgusting” and said Matthews and Taylor were cellmates before the trial and concocted that version of what happened.

Taylor, wearing a blue shirt with the collar open and wire-frame glasses, sat with defense lawyers facing jurors from across the courtroom.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Poole again Monday showed jurors evidence photos from Luck’s autopsy, including one that shows the bloody gunshot wound in Luck’s mouth. Poole said the bullet and Luck’s teeth were recovered in the victim’s stomach.

“That’s what he looked like after he met Rejon Taylor,” Poole said.

During the trial, jurors saw law enforcement photos and videotapes of Luck’s blood splattered van and the roadside at Collegedale where Luck suddenly attempted to jump on Mathews.

Neff said Matthews shot Luck in the arm and as Luck continued attempting to overpower him in the van Taylor fired a shot that passed through Luck and also struck Matthews. Neff said Taylor then shot Luck in the mouth, a wound the prosecutor described as fatal.

Neff said Luck was able to tell people who ran to the van after the gunshots “that he had been robbed and shot.”

Neff said that as Taylor drove the van from Atlanta into Tennessee, Marshall followed in a car owned by Taylor’s mother. The prosecutor said that based partly on eyewitness accounts, Taylor and Matthews got in the car with Marshall after the shooting. He said they returned to Atlanta, where Matthews went to a hospital and was later arrested.

The prosecutor said Marshall turned himself in and Taylor was arrested months later at an apartment, hiding in a refrigerator where investigators found a “naked Mr. Taylor with a knife.”

Neff told jurors that after the theft crimes that included Taylor stealing from mailboxes, Taylor in 2003 started stalking Luck, driving by his house, following him and once “actually ate at the restaurant.”