WATERLOO, Ill. (AP) — A juror in the trial of a southwestern Illinois man convicted of strangling his wife and their two sons says the defendant’s apparent deception swung the jury against him.

Christopher Coleman was found guilty last week in Monroe County in the May 2009 killings and was sentenced to life in prison Monday.

Juror Kimberly Ferrari of Pinckneyville tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the panel’s 12 members believed Coleman was the killer but several initially struggled with finding him guilty because there was no direct evidence against him.

But jurors all agreed to convict after noting that time stamps on some cell phone photos Coleman exchanged with his mistress showed their affair actually had begun a couple of months before the mistress testified it did.

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