SANTA ANA – A 41-year-old Long Beach man who has spent the past 11 years behind bars while his case wended through court was convicted Wednesday of second-degree murder for a stolen stove dropping out of his pickup – leading to an off-duty officer fatally crashing into a cement truck.

An Orange County Superior Court jury took just hours to reach the decision. When the verdict was read in court, the family of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy cried and hugged.

Cole Wilkins had been convicted of first-degree murder for the death of David Piquette and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison. But the California Supreme Court overturned his conviction, because of faulty jury instructions.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office decided to re-try him – but Judge Thomas Goethals ruled it wouldn’t be for first-degree murder, because then-prosecutor Michael Murray, now an Orange County judge, had committed “serious misconduct” by failing to tell the defense about a traffic report altered by a California Highway Patrol sergeant to help prosecutors.

Now, Wilkins faces 15 years to life, having served 11 while awaiting the final verdict. To convict, the jury had to decide that Wilkins had a conscious disregard for human life when driving on the freeway with an unsecured load of heavy, stolen kitchen items.

In closing arguments on Wednesday, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker said Wilkins’ knew his actions were dangerous and could result in a death, while Deputy Public Defender Sara Ross argued that Wilkins had no way of knowing the stove would fall out and kill someone.

Over the Fourth of July weekend in 2006, Wilkins, a former construction worker, stole several large kitchen appliances from a home under construction in Menifee in Riverside County.

Walker said he failed to secure the heavy load in his Ford F250 truck even though he had ties, and he left the tailgate down while headed to his girlfriend’s home in Long Beach.

At about 5 a.m. that day, a $1,000 boxed stove fell out of his truck and landed on the 91 freeway in Anaheim.

The stove prompted four different accidents as drivers swerved to miss it. When an angry motorist forced him to pull over, Wilkins threatened the man and gave him a fake name, Walker said.

Piquette, a popular police trainer who was on his way to work at the sheriff’s academy in Whittier, was driving in the fast lane when he swerved to miss the stove, colliding with the cement truck. He was crushed when the truck jackknifed and fell over onto his Ford Crown Victoria.

Two CHP officers initially concluded that Piquette was at fault for driving too fast to avoid the stove. But former CHP Sgt. Joe Morrison testified in the trial that he changed an original accident report and had another altered to conclude the off-duty deputy was not at fault. Morrison said he did so to help boost a murder charge against Wilkins, believing it was “the right thing to do.”

That information never made to the defense in Wilkins’ first trial.

While jurors may not like how the CHP handled the reports, it should not have any merit on the fact that Wilkins’ actions lead to a death, Walker said during the last trial.

“This is a person who put their greed above everything,” she told the jury. “He knew it was dangerous, and he did it anyway.”

While he did steal items, Ross said, Wilkins had no intentions of hurting anyone and no way of knowing that the stove would fall out of his truck and kill someone on the freeway. There was no conscious disregard for human life, she said.

“Mr. Wilkins had no idea that someone was going to die,” she said.

Prosecutors charged the case in a way where jurors had no option for a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, Ross said.

“It’s all or nothing,” she told the jury. “They put you in that position.”

Wilkins returns to court for sentencing on Sept. 29. With his time served, he could be eligible for parole in about four years.