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Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2012 file photo, George Huguely V, right, is escorted by a sheriff's deputy as he arrives for his trial at the Charlottesville Circuit courthouse in Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

Jurors found a former University of Virginia lacrosse player guilty of second-degree murder Wednesday in the drunken, jealousy-fuelled slaying of his ex-girlfriend, rejecting a verdict of first-degree murder and a possible life sentence.

George Huguely V, 24, stood, flanked by his attorneys, as jurors returned the verdict after about nine hours of deliberations. He was convicted in the slaying of Yeardley Love, who was found bloodied, beaten and bruised in the bedroom of her Charlottesville apartment in the early morning hours of May 3, 2010.

Huguely displayed no emotion as the verdict was read. Sobbing could be heard in the courtroom filled with family and friends of Love and Huguely.

Jurors who returned the verdict immediately began deliberating a sentence, which will include punishment for a grand larceny charge the jury also found him guilty on. The second-degree murder conviction calls for a sentence of 5 to 40 years, while grand larceny's sentencing range is 1 to 20 years. Formal sentencing will occur at a later date.

Prosecutors said Huguely, of Chevy Chase, Md., killed the U.Va. women's lacrosse player after a day of golf and binge drinking, incensed that she had had a relationship with a North Carolina lacrosse player. Love's right eye was bashed in and she was hit with such power that her brain was bruised. She also had wrenching head injury that caused bleeding at the base of her brain stem.

A coroner concluded she died of blunt force trauma. Defence and prosecution experts offered different medical opinions on the lethal consequences of her injuries.

Prosecutor Dave Chapman, who described the night Love was killed as a scene from a horror show, said Huguely kicked a hole in Love's door to get in her bedroom and left his on-again, off-again girlfriend to die.

Huguely's attorneys said he only went to Love's apartment to talk before the encounter quickly turned physical. He said she banged her head against the wall of her bedroom, and she only had a bloody nose when he left.

A prosecution witness testified Love smothered in her own blood-dampened pillow.