SAN DIEGO — After a little more than one day of deliberations, a San Diego jury found Ali Abulaban guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.
The jury found Abulaban, a former social media personality, killed his wife Ana, and her friend, Ray Barron with malice.
Because Abulaban admitted to the killings, the jury was given the task of deciding whether Abulaban was guilty of first-degree, second-degree, or manslaughter when he entered his estranged wife's high-rise apartment and shot her and Barron while the two were on the couch.
"First-degree murder is an intent to kill with malice aforethought. So, you want to kill and you have an evil intent in your mind. Second-degree murder is killing somebody, intending to do so with malice, not premeditated. Voluntary manslaughter is killing someone in the heat of passion," explained criminal defense attorney Gretchen Von Helms.
This trial lasted for nearly a month and culminated in Abulaban's testimony where at times he struggled to maintain his composure, at times lashing out at the prosecutor.
"If you can get a defendant to blow up at you on a domestic violence killing case, then it shows that that guy has anger, doesn't like women, wants to keep women in their place, for example. And so she very cleverly, just was pick pick pick pick, asking him question after question after question to get him to explode and he exploded on her. And then the jury can think, oh, maybe that's what he did with his wife," said Von Helms.
The judge will sentence Abulaban on June 28.