A jury on Monday in Douglas County district court found the man accused of killing a Colorado State Patrol trooper in November 2016 guilty on some charges.

Noe Gamez-Ruiz was found guilty of careless driving while passing an emergency vehicle resulting in death and failure to stay in a single lane. The jury acquitted him of another careless driving charge.

Gamez-Ruiz will be sentenced July 30. According to a release from the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, the convictions carry a maximum sentence of 12 months in jail, but Gamez-Ruiz would be eligible for probation. 

Trooper Cody Donahue was at the scene of a crash on Interstate 25 near Castle Rock when he was struck three times by a box truck that Gamez-Ruiz drove: On the hip, in the leg by bolts of the truck’s tire and in the head by a padlock on the truck.

According to prosecutors, the third blow killed Donahue instantly.

Prosecutors argued he had enough notice and space to move over on the highway, while defense attorneys said Gamez-Ruiz couldn’t have moved over and instead slowed down when he saw flashing lights.

In a statement Monday, CSP Chief Matthew Packard thanked the jury members for their service and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office for its commitement to the case. He asked the public to take care when driving and seeing someone on the side of the road by slowing down and moving over when passing someone on the side of the road.

“Throughout this process I recognized that regardless of the outcome, this was going to be hard. I have gained a whole new respect for what a victim goes through,” Packard said in the statement. “This has been an incredibly challenging time for all of our Patrol members, but particularly hard for the Donahue family. To them, I say ‘We miss him too.'”

The jury began deliberations Friday afternoon and resumed Monday morning. 

Gamez-Ruiz’s convictions come after two previous mistrials. The first came in September 2018 and the second occurred in February 2019. 

As part of a sanction of the prosecution for discovery violations, a charge of criminally negligent homicide was dismissed after the second mistrial, the most serious charge Gamez-Ruiz faced. 

Judge Shay Whitaker called the prosecution’s witness preparation “haphazard” and found that while the prosecution’s conduct was not willful, it deprived Gamez-Ruiz of the ability to fully defend himself. 

In 2017 Colorado’s legislature passed the “Move Over for Cody Act,” which added stopped public utility service vehicles to existing law that makes failure to exercise caution when approaching or passing a stopped emergency and towing vehicles a class A traffic violation for careless driving.

The law also increased penalties to a class 1 misdemeanor if the driver’s actions cause bodily injury to someone else and a class 6 felony if their actions are the proximate cause of another person’s death.

Denver Gazette partner 9News contributed to this report.