Guilty. Both Counts. The Jury Said Text Messages Can Make You a Murderer.

Isaac Apodaca is a convicted murderer, and he never swung the sword.

That sentence should stop you, because it is the whole case in one line. Grace Jennings was killed with a sword. The person who swung it was Kiara McCulley, his fiancee's friend, and she has already pleaded guilty. Apodaca was across town. His hands were clean. And on Day 6 of the Bloody Sword trial, a Santa Fe jury convicted him of first-degree, willful and deliberate murder, and of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, on the theory that he built the killing with his phone.

The question this trial asked from the very first day was blunt and it was new: can text messages make you a murderer? Twelve people have now answered it. Yes. Both counts. And they signed their name to it in the dark.

I want to walk you through how the day got there, because the verdict did not come out of nowhere. It came out of a morning fight over the verdict form, three closing arguments, and a deliberation that outlasted the lights in the building.

The Morning: Murder or Nothing

Before the jury heard a single closing, the lawyers fought over what the jury would be allowed to do. That fight is the charge conference, and it is where this case was quietly decided. The defense dropped voluntary manslaughter on the first count. The second-degree rung stayed on the form, but the practical road narrowed to a single lane: first-degree murder, or an acquittal. There was very little middle left to land on.

That is a gamble, and it cuts both ways. Take away the compromise verdicts and you dare the jury to walk him out the door if they have any doubt at all. You also hand them a form where the only conviction available is the most serious one on the books. When the defense narrows the choices like that, they are betting the reasonable doubt is real. The morning also settled that Apodaca would not testify. The jury would never hear his voice explain a single message.

WATCH: PART 27 The Charge Conference: the defense drops voluntary manslaughter and the jury faces murder or nothing

The State's Close: Built With Words

Then the State stood up and told the jury the thing that makes this case unlike almost any murder trial you have watched. Their man never needed to be in the room. Prosecutor Murphy walked the jury back through the phone, because the phone was the weapon. The countdown from six. The line that read "voila she dead." The search, from his own devices, for how to dispose of a body. The State's argument was that Apodaca did not have to swing the blade because he had already done the harder part. He built the plan, he set it in motion, and he pointed it at Grace.

That is what conspiracy and willful, deliberate murder are supposed to reach. Not just the hand on the weapon, but the mind that aimed it. The State asked the jury to see typing as an act, and to hold a man responsible for a death he engineered from a distance.

WATCH: PART 28 The State's Closing: Apodaca built the murder with words and never swung the blade

The Defense's Close: Suspicion Is Not Proof

The defense's answer, from Nair, was the answer it had to be. Suspicion is not guilt. The State proved that Apodaca looked bad, that the messages were ugly, that the story was disturbing. It did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the man on trial was the author of the plan rather than a person swept up in someone else's. Kiara McCulley is the one who acted. She is the one who picked up the sword. She pleaded guilty because she did it. The defense asked the jury to keep the two of them separate and to refuse to convict one person for the certainty of another person's crime.

It is a real argument. In a case with no fingerprints on the weapon and a defendant across town, the distance between "he is guilty" and "he looks guilty" is exactly where a reasonable doubt is supposed to live.

WATCH: PART 29 The Defense's Closing: the State proved suspicion, and Kiara acted alone

The Last Word

The State closed the way the State always gets to close, with the final word. The rebuttal asked the jury for conviction on both counts and sent them back to decide. In a case built on messages, the last thing the jury carried into the room was the State's reading of them.

WATCH: PART 30 The State's Rebuttal and the case to the jury

The Verdict, By Flashlight

Here is the part I keep coming back to. While the jury was deliberating the most serious question a citizen can be handed, the courthouse lost power. They did not stop. They kept working in a building that had gone dark, and they came back with a verdict read by flashlight. Guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty of conspiracy. The second-degree form was left unsigned, because they never needed it. The judge polled all twelve, one by one, and all twelve confirmed it.

So the answer to the question is on the record now. In this courtroom, in this case, text messages made a man a murderer. Not the sword. The words that pointed it.

The Part 31 verdict video, the full No Breaks edition of the closing day, and the verdict clip are uploading as I write this. When they land they will sit at the top of the case page with everything else.

PART 31: THE VERDICT Full verdict coverage lands here as it publishes. See all Apodaca coverage.

What Is Left

The guilt phase is over. The only thing still in front of Isaac Apodaca is sentencing, and it is roughly thirty days out. No date is set. When it is, the question changes. It stops being whether he did it, because that is answered, and it becomes what a man who killed with a keyboard and never held the weapon actually deserves. I will be there for that too.

For now, sit with the thing this jury decided. A person can be convicted of murder in the first degree without ever being in the same part of town as the killing. That is not a loophole and it is not a stretch. It is what happens when the law looks at intent and planning and decides that the mind that builds a death is as responsible as the hand that delivers it. Grace Jennings is gone. The jury looked at a phone full of messages and found the man who aimed the whole thing at her.