FARMINGTON – A man convicted of manslaughter in 2000 was found guilty Tuesday of threatening to kill the mother of his child.

Jeremiah Paulton, 26, of Farmington was returned to the Franklin County jail, where he has been incarcerated since his arrest on a terrorizing charge in August, to await sentencing.

District Court Judge Valerie Stanfill found him guilty on that charge and of violating his probation on the manslaughter conviction.

Paulton was sentenced in November 2000 to serve seven years of a 20-year prison term followed by six years of probation. He was initially charged with murder in the 1999 stabbing death of Blaine Jasper. Paulton, then 16, served 19 months in juvenile detention before he was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge.

During Tuesday’s bench trial, police officer Bridgette Gilbert testified that she responded to a report of terrorizing on Aug. 10, 2008. Gilbert described the demeanor of Samantha Williamson, now Deckard, as being very upset, shaking and paranoid.

Deckard took the stand and said that she began a relationship with Paulton in 2005 after he was released from prison. She has four children, one of which is Paulton’s, she said.

She described the relationship as physically, mentally and emotionally abusive. She broke off the relationship in February 2008 and got a protection from abuse order against Paulton, she said. She has full custody of their daughter.

Deckard said when Paulton called her via a friend’s cell phone on Aug. 10, he asked why she hadn’t called him about an accident involving their daughter. He became irate when she told him no one was injured and that she had full custody of the child and didn’t have to report to him.

“He told me not to . . . with him or he was going to kill me,” Deckard said. “He was screaming. He was very upset.”

She was scared, she said.

“I believed him. I was shaking. I was scared. My heart was racing,” Deckard said.

Under cross-examination, defense attorney Joshua Robbins accused Deckard of substance abuse and said she called police in retaliation for Paulton calling the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate her.

Deckard denied both accusations.

Friends of the couple – Dennis Barnett, a state witness, and Cheryl Ouellette, a defense witness – said they heard Deckard threatening to put Paulton in jail, just as she did her current boyfriend. (That boyfriend said that was untrue during testimony.)

She was acting like a lunatic, Ouellette said.

Paulton’s mother, Theresa Paulton of Wilton, testified that she was with her son when he made the call to Deckard about his daughter. She said she heard her son tell Deckard that if she wanted to kill herself, “do it without the children in the car.”