Jason Young, the N.C. State alum on trial for the death of his wife, was found guilty of first-degree murder, Monday, March 5.

After nearly 10 hours of deliberation, the jury, made up of eight women and four men, handed down a unanimous guilty verdict. Young’s conviction carries a life in prison sentence without the possibility of parole.

The trial that began with opening statements on Feb. 6 and concluded with a guilty verdict on March 5, was Young’s second appearance in court after his first trial in the summer of 2011 was declared a mistrial.

According to prosecutors, the second time around they wanted to present the jury with enough information to reach a unanimous decision.

“We tried to give this jury more information so that they could make the decision, and they did,” prosecutor Becky Holt said on WRAL.com.

Though the state’s case was primarily based on circumstantial evidence, two new key witnesses were introduced in an effort to dissect the weeks and days leading up to Michelle Young’s death.

During the trial, the state used the testimony of Michelle Young’s therapist and also the daycare worker who witnessed the Youngs’ 2-year-old daughter Cassidy acting out an attack with her dolls.

According to reports of the trial, during testimony the therapist painted a picture of an unhappy and lonely wife who, she said, seemed to be verbally abused.

After 18 days of testimony, the state and defense teams rested their cases and the jury was released to deliberate the fate of Jason Young.

While one juror, Anthony Fuller, called the trial “emotionally draining,” he said he and his fellow jurors had to look at the evidence and consider the testimonies without being emotionally biased.

While it is typically uncommon to find someone guilty of first-degree murder with little or no physical evidence, Fuller said in a WRAL report that the jurors began looking at the many coincidences surrounding the case and the evidence.

In the report Fuller said, “we started naming all these coincidences, it was like ‘how do you just have this many coincidences?'”

In a CNN report, another juror, Melissa Axline, said there was a great amount of circumstantial evidence piled against Young.

Axline said she initially thought Young was not guilty but soon changed her mind after carefully examining the “mountain” of evidence that pointed to him.

The other jurors seemed to agree. The report stated jury forewoman Tracey Raksnis said there were two main pieces of evidence that helped them reach a guilty verdict.

Those key points of evidence were, she said, that the clothes and shoes that Jason Young had been wearing the night of murder were never found, and Cassidy Young’s feet and pajamas had been cleaned after she left bloody footprints around the house.

“She was cleaned up. I don’t see anybody else [but Jason Young] doing that. If this was just a robbery, I don’t think you pay that kind of attention,” Raksnis said in the WRAL report.

Like Raksnis, Axline said one of the crucial points of evidence was Young’s missing clothes after the night of the murder.

“One of the major things that influenced her was that Young couldn’t produce the clothes he wore the night she died. Axline said if he were innocent he would have been handing this stuff to the police,” according to a CNN justice report.

Morgan Pritchett, senior in nutrition, has kept up with the trial.

“So many things like the pieces of circumstantial evidence aren’t just there out of the blue — they mean something,” Pritchett said. “It’s crazy to think someone who went to your school and had this perfect little family could commit such a brutal murder.”

While Jason Young is currently in the beginning stages of his life-sentence, the latest controversy surrounding the trial is the possibility of jury misconduct.

Last Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens ordered a State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) probe into the possibility of a juror communicating with an outsider during deliberations.

The day the verdict was reached the WRAL Facebook page contained a post that read:

“My hairdresser is friends with a jury member on the JY trial. They are now deadlocked at 9 Guilty 3 Not Guilty. It was 7 Not Guilty 5 Guilty!”

Later that day the same user posted a comment saying, “My hairdresser is friends with a woman on the jury. She was supposedly texting her telling her how the vote was going.”

In his letter to the SBI Director Greg McLeod, Stephens wrote, “Although this social media conversation… is unsubstantiated hearsay and appears to lack any credible factual basis, it suggests that there is a question about the deliberative process of the jury.”

Though it could be nothing short of social media exaggeration, according to reports, Stephens is serious about an investigation if there’s any chance of the allegations being true. And in the case of jury misconduct, despite a guilty verdict, there is potential for the declaration of a mistrial.

Young’s first trial ended as a mistrial after jurors were deadlocked and could not reach a unanimous decision. The juror misconduct allegation is currently being investigated.

As for the outcome of the trial, senior in statistics, Tracey D’Angelo, sees the whole thing as a sad event.

“It’s a tragedy no matter what the outcome is because that little girl has to grow up without either of her parents,” D’Angelo said.

Other students saw it differently.

“From what I’ve seen and heard about the trial, it looks like [Jason Young] is getting what he deserves,” Pritchett said.