A Tempe lawyer convicted of fatally stabbing an Arizona State University student is in custody after failing to attend court Thursday where he faced a guilty verdict.

Daniel Gukeisen, a 39-year-old former bankruptcy attorney in Tempe and prosecutor in South Dakota, was found guilty of manslaughter in Maricopa County Superior Court for killing Garrett Hohn in 2009 after a heated argument. Gukeisen attended every other court hearing of the trial. Judge Cari Harrison issued a bench warrant for his arrest.

Sergeant Steve Carbajal, a Tempe police spokesman, said Gukeisen was apprehended, but he had no details on the circumstances of the arrest.

Authorities say Gukeisen stabbed Hohn in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 2009. They said about 2 a.m., Hohn and a friend were walking passed Gukeisen's Tempe home on First Street in Tempe when the attorney confronted the two for being too noisy. Gukeisen came out onto the street and the two men starting fighting. Hohn fell to the ground with a stab wound.

Gukeisen was found guilty of non-dangerous manslaughter, and although he faced three to 10 years in prison, he was also eligible for probation.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said that he will now ask for an enhanced sentence.

Gukeisen's attorney, Larry Debus, said his client probably fled because he was afraid for his life.

Debus said he had arranged for security to protect Gukeisen and his wife as they left the courthouse in the event there was a not-guilty verdict.

"My client is terrified that somebody might kill him," Debus said.

But an attorney for the victim's family expressed surprise at that assertion.

"It appears to the family that he's afraid of facing justice," said Jeff Johnson, an attorney with Arizona Voice for Crime Victims.

Alex Morris, a law firm marketing consultant who said Gukeisen was a client, posted on his blog www.azlawyermarketing.com that he was "even tempered and calm individual."

"I could never imagine that he would be capable of what he was accused of doing," Morris wrote of his client of nearly five years.