AUBURN — It all came down to the gun.

The silver-colored .38-caliber revolver that Daniel Roberts said his ex-girlfriend pointed at him before he shot her in the back of the head, killing her instantly.

The gun he said she stole from his house then returned days later threatening to shoot her 2-year-old daughter.

It’s the same gun Deputy Attorney General William Stokes told the jury Roberts planted next to Mendoza’s dead body so he could claim self-defense.

It’s the gun crime lab workers said bore none of Melissa Mendoza’s DNA or fingerprints.

If the jury believed Mendoza pointed that gun at Roberts in his garage shortly before 1:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 15, 2005, he likely would have been acquitted of murder, Stokes said Tuesday.

If the jury believes she’s got a gun, it’s over for us,” he said. “If the jury believes she didn’t have a gun, it’s over for them.

A day earlier, Roberts’ attorney, Leonard Sharon, had said the same thing: “It comes down to whether she had the gun.

In the end, the 12 jurors apparently agreed she didn’t have the gun when they found him guilty of murder.

Shortly after examining the white, flat box containing that gun, state’s exhibit No. 1, jurors came back at 4:40 p.m. with their verdict, ending the three-week murder trial.

Seven women and five men spent less than three hours in the jury room deliberating before the foreman stood in the courtroom and returned the verdict. Each of the jurors was polled, and, one by one, answered, “guilty.”

Mendoza’s family erupted, convulsing with sobs of joy and relief. Her mother, uncle, aunt and two friends had sat in the front row holding hands before the verdict.

Justice Joyce Wheeler asked for quiet in the Androscoggin County Court room.

Roberts stood beside Sharon at the defense table, dressed in a white dress shirt and light khakis. He showed no expression.

His friends and family, who had been in the courtroom every day of the trial, were absent during the reading of the verdict.

Earlier on Tuesday, jurors had spent most of the day sitting in the courtroom jury box, many of them scribbling notes on yellow note pads, listening a second time to Roberts’ 911 call to report the shooting;custody hearing in 8th District Court with the Department of Human Services; interview with Maine State Police detectives the morning of the shooting; and answers to police during the interview as read in court by one of the detectives.

They had deliberated for just over an hour in the morning before sending a note to the judge asking to review the taped exhibits. Shortly before reaching a verdict, they asked for a second playing of the 911 tape and to see the silver-colored gun.

Stokes said he didn’t interview the jury after the verdict, something attorneys sometimes do to better understand the outcome.

Wheeler said she would speak to jurors in the jury room after court was adjourned, likely thanking them.

She said Roberts would be held in jail until sentencing.

As the jury filed out, Roberts talked quietly to Sharon, running his index finger back and forth across the wooden table.

Outside the courthouse, Mendoza’s mother, Mary Mireles, talked to reporters.

“I just thank God, and Bill (Stokes) and everyone here for finding justice for Melissa, my daughter whom I miss so much.”.

“Long hard battle. Long hard battle,” said Mac Garcia, Mendoza’s uncle. “But the man was found guilty for the murder of my niece, Melissa Mendoza.”.

“She was a good person,” he said, his voice breaking. “She was a good woman, a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter and everything, and they trashed her name.”

Her family stayed in a hotel near the courthouse throughout the trial, attending every day, including Tuesday.

They expect to come back for Roberts’ sentencing.

Stokes said he predicted a conviction or a hung jury, never an acquittal.

“We didn’t feel the defense really touched the strength of our case,” he said. “And basically the defense was to assassinate the character of Melissa Mendoza.” .

“What seemed to us fairly obvious … was that she was ambushed, she was lured over there and once he knew she was over there her put in place the trap. And he sprung it.’

The fact that Mendoza was shot in the back of the head made Roberts’ story of self-defense a hard one for the jury to swallow, he said. Crime scene photos suggested she had been carrying a Pepsi bottle, cell phone and handbag at the time she was shot.

The hardest thing for the jury to believe must have been Roberts’ assertion that Mendoza would want to kill her daughter.

“That’s what did him in” Stokes said.

As for sentencing, he said the planning of the killing would weigh heavily in favor of a longer sentence.

Slipping through a side door of the courthouse, defense lawyer Leonard Sharon looked defeated.

“We’re disappointed,” he said. “But we’re considering our next options.”.

Sharon said Roberts plans to appeal the verdict. Possible grounds include problems Sharon believes were revealed within the jury early in the trial. Those problems, he said: ‘may have manifested themselves in the verdict.”.

As for Roberts’ emotional state, Sharon said his client was holding up well.

“Danny’s doing fine. I mean, for someone who was just convicted of murder, he’s holding up well,” Sharon said.

As for his own personal feelings about the outcome, Sharon said: “When you lose, you always feel like you missed something. It’s human nature.

Roberts and Mendoza had been embroiled in a custody dispute over their daughter Savanna Marie. After an on-and-off relationship the couple appeared to have broken up for good.

Mendoza moved back to California where her family and two older children lived.

She had flown Savanna back to California a month earlier during Roberts’ custody period; their custody agreement alternated six months with the child for each parent.

The weekend before Roberts shot her, Mendoza was directed by the court to stay at his Sabattus home with his nanny for a supervised visit with Savanna.

Roberts had claimed that was when Mendoza took one of the two guns he owned and forgot to take with him or put in his safe.

But Stokes had told the jury to consider his story; that he forgot the gun, didn’t report it to police when he noticed it was missing and invited Mendoza over to his house even though he suspected she had taken his loaded gun.

Moreover, the holster for that gun was found by police on the dining room hutch. When Mendoza came to his house that morning, she never got farther than a couple of feet inside the garage door.

Police from the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office and Auburn police were positioned discreetly in various areas around the courthouse after the verdict was read. That is in keeping with security during the trial that was said to be the tightest in the history of the courthouse.

Uniformed officers stood at the back of the courtroom before the jury filed in with its verdict. During the three-week trial, the courthouse was locked except for the front entrance where officers checked bags with an x-ray machine and people walked through a metal detector. It was the first time court workers could remember that the building had been so secure.

Lewiston’s deputy police chief, Michael Bussiere, said the case was one of the biggest in the Twin Cities: “By Lewiston/Auburn standards, it’s been an epic trial. It’s obvious the jury considered all the evidence and they came back with a very thoughtful verdict.

Staff Writer Mark Laflamme contributed to this report.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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