For the second time in three months, Curtis Cortez Jones has been convicted of carrying out an Iowa City murder.

A Polk County jury Wednesday found Jones, 42, guilty murdering bail bondsmen Jonathan Wieseler in 2017. The deliberations took about two and a half hours, according to court records.

“We, the jury, find the Defendant, Curtis Cortez Jones, guilty of the crime of Murder in the First Degree committed by premeditation, willfulness and deliberation, and/or while participating in Robbery in the First Degree,” reads a court document from jurors.

Jones was found guilty Nov. 20, 2018 of murdering Iowa City taxi driver Ricky Lillie. On Jan. 5, less than two weeks before the Wieseler trial began, Jones was sentenced to life in prison for killing Lillie, 46. Jones has maintained his innocence in that case.

The Mount Pleasant man also denied ever seeing or harming Wieseler, whose body was found by his fiancee on April 23, 2017 at his job. Wiesler, 34, had been robbed, beaten and killed the night before in his office at Lederman Bail Bonds, located across the street from the Johnson County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities said Jones, a father of 12 who was paroled after a 2005 armed robbery, shot Wieseler in the head with a small-caliber gun and slit his throat.

On the first day of trial, prosecutors said Jones was seen on surveillance video the day of the shooting within blocks of the crime scene, driving a car later searched by police. Forensic testing showed evidence seized there had DNA from Wieseler and Jones, charging documents show.

Authorities placed Jones inside or near the bondsman's office the night of the killing, according to information from a cellphone tower that tracked his location. Jones was arrested in November 2017.

Jones elected to represent himself at trial. He told jurors to not be "fooled or blinded by the horrific" crime scene photographs prosecutors planned to show.

"The pictures sicken me, so I understand how you will see them, but I'm not responsible for that," he said.

Wieseler grew up in Sioux City and graduated from high school there in 2001 before moving to Iowa City, where he received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Iowa. He was an avid reader and a huge Hawkeyes fan, family said.

Sentencing for Jones' latest conviction is set for 1:30 p.m. March 8 in Johnson County. Regardless of that outcome, he is scheduled to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jones, who killed Lillie two months after murdering Wieseler, was sentenced to life in prison without parole earlier this month after a jury found him guilty of murdering the taxi driver. Jones got a ride from Lillie before shooting him in the head during a robbery in June 2017, police said.

Both robberies and slayings came less than a year after Jones had been released from prison. He was granted parole in November 2016 — years earlier than he was set to be released for a prior robbery conviction — after the Iowa Board of Parole ruled he was unlikely to be a detriment to the community. But records showed Jones was deemed a high risk to commit more violence and had escaped from a halfway house.

The Iowa Department of Corrections defended its decision to recommend parole for Jones, noting he had two job offers and a place to live with an aunt in Washington, Iowa. Within months, however, he was unemployed and had moved elsewhere, records show.

Jones was given a 40-year sentence after robbing a motel and a grocery store while brandishing a pellet gun in the Iowa City area in 2005. During the robberies, he tied up a hotel clerk and struck another employee in the head with his gun.

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Automatic credit for good behavior shortened his sentence to 18 years; Jones served 11 years before he was paroled, records show. He had been placed at a Coralville halfway house in March 2016 and obtained a work-release job at a hotel.

After a month, Jones was accused of stealing a customer's credit card information and making fraudulent purchases and the hotel fired him. Jones then absconded for two weeks, ignoring pleas to turn himself in before eventually surrendering.

Jones' first murder trial was moved from Johnson County to Scott County because of pretrial publicity. The second, for the same reason, was moved to Polk County.

He has been transported back to Johnson County, court records show.

Follow the Register on Facebook and Twitter for more news. Tyler Davis can be contacted at tjdavis@dmreg.com or on Twitter @TDavisDMR.