CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former pro football player Rae Carruth was acquitted of first-degree murder but convicted of conspiracy Friday in the slaying of his pregnant girlfriend, who was ambushed and shot in her car.
Carruth, 26, was spared the possibility of the death penalty but could get as much as 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder.
Cherica Adams, 24, was shot four times on a Charlotte street in November 1999 in an attack that prosecutors said Carruth masterminded to avoid paying child support. Prosecutors said he used his car to box in Adams and set her up for the kill by a hired gunman.
Adams died a month later. Her son, fathered by Carruth, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section and is being raised by Adams' mother.
The jury took about 20 hours to reach the verdict and a day earlier had reported it was deadlocked. In addition to conspiracy, the former Carolina Panthers receiver was found guilty of shooting into an occupied vehicle and using an instrument — a gun — to try to destroy an unborn child.
Sentencing was set for Monday.
Defense attorney David Rudolf said he will ask the judge to throw out the conspiracy conviction because it is inconsistent with acquittal on the murder charge.
"I believe in my client's innocence, and I don't feel he is guilty of any of the charges," he said.
Juror Edward Karst said he was satisfied with what he called a "compromise verdict."
"We couldn't get agreement for the first-degree," Karst said in a brief telephone interview Friday night. "We didn't spend 4 1/2 days in there for nothing. We didn't want it to be a waste of everybody's time. I think we made the right decision."
Carruth showed no emotion as the verdicts were read. Among the spectators, Adams' mother hugged another woman and appeared to be crying. She also hugged prosecutors.
"I think they believe justice has truly been served. Justice has spoken," said Frank Porter, a lawyer for Adams' father. "It has given them closure."
Carruth's mother, Theodry, stared quietly at her son. After he was led out of court, she and supporters huddled and prayed.
Two co-defendants — confessed gunman Van Brett Watkins and Michael Kennedy, who was driving the car that carried Watkins — testified that Carruth arranged the shooting because he didn't want to be responsible for the child. Prosecutors also said Carruth was angry because Adams refused to get an abortion.
Some of the most damning testimony came from Adams herself. Prosecutors played a recording of her 911 call moments after she was shot. Moaning in pain, Adams said Carruth had stopped his Ford Expedition in front of her car, and "somebody pulled up beside me and did this. ... I think he did it. I don't know what to think."
Carruth claimed he was miles away from the shooting and had nothing to do with its planning.
The defense also challenged the idea that Carruth was worried about paying child support, calling Panthers officials to testify that the football player was making more than $650,000 and that his place on the team was secure.
The defense argued instead that Watkins shot Adams on his own because he was angry that Carruth had backed out of a drug deal and because Adams made an obscene gesture at him from her car.
Watkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to testify for prosecutors that Carruth paid him $5,000 for the slaying. He said Carruth badgered and threatened him until he agreed to the plot.
"He hired me as a hit man," Watkins testified. "He hired me to kill Cherica Adams and the baby. ... If he would kill his own girl and their baby, what would he do to me?"
Watkins also swore at Carruth, stood up in the witness box and shouted across the courtroom: "Are you happy now?"
Kennedy testified for prosecutors without a plea bargain and is awaiting trial on a murder charge, as is Stanley Drew Abraham, who was also allegedly in the car that night.
Carruth was arrested after the shooting — but before Adams died — and was released on $3 million bail in 1999. He was expected to turn himself in if Adams died. But when she died, he fled. FBI agents found him the next day hiding in the trunk of a car outside a motel in Tennessee.
At the time of the shooting, Carruth was a member of the Panthers, which drafted him 27th overall in 1997 out of University of Colorado.
As a rookie, he led all first-year NFL players with 44 receptions for 545 yards. But his second and third seasons were hampered by injuries and he played in only a few games. The team dropped him when he fled to Tennessee.
His trial came during a year with other major cases involving athletes.
Another former Panther, Fred Lane, was shot to death last July in what prosecutors said was a dispute with his wife.
And Ray Lewis, an All-Pro linebacker with the Baltimore Ravens, was originally accused with two others of murder in the stabbing deaths of two men following a post-Super Bowl party last January. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and his co-defendants were acquitted.