JOHN R. McCUTCHEN / Union-Tribune Defendant Keith Turner reacts upon hearing the jury's decision.

EL CAJON – A Ramona man who strangled his wife and buried her in his back yard was acquitted of murder but convicted of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter Wednesday.

Keith Harold Turner faces a maximum of 11 years in prison for killing Toby Turner, 44, in September 2005.

Several jurors said outside the courtroom they will write letters to El Cajon Superior Court Judge William J. McGrath urging leniency when Turner is sentenced Jan. 23.

Echoing arguments made by defense lawyer Tom Warwick, they said Turner had been pushed to the breaking point by an unfaithful wife who was so addicted to methamphetamine that she was mentally unstable and no longer the woman he loved. Toby Turner also had been living with another man off-and-on while still married to Keith Turner.

“We felt he was almost as much a victim as Toby,” said jury forewoman Suzie McLeod. She said Turner has been punished enough with the year he's spent in jail awaiting trial and should be set free.

Juror Linda Brown said she will urge the judge to give Turner the least amount of prison time allowed by law.

“By no means are we minimizing what happened to Toby – a life is gone,” Brown said. “Sometimes you're pushed into a corner and you make the wrong decision.”

Warwick and Deputy District Attorney Kurt Mechals said the minimum sentence would be three years. Mechals said the judge also has the authority to release Turner on probation.

“In a lot of ways, society let him down,” Brown said. “You have someone who has a drug addiction. We don't help that person, we don't help the family and then something like this happens and we all cry for justice.”

Turner, 57, told sheriff's deputies in videotaped interviews that after strangling his wife in their Oak Springs Drive home on Sept. 19, 2005, he buried her in a shallow grave beside a backyard pond.

He told deputies he moved the remains to a deeper grave in November 2007 as he prepared to sell his house and move to Arizona.

Juror Tera Doughty said the backyard burial was odd but not an issue in the jury's deliberations. Brown said she figured Turner just panicked and didn't think about what he was doing.

A key witness in Turner's monthlong trial was his stepson, Sean Turner, who testified that he saw Turner standing over his mother's body after hearing him drag something through the house. Sean Turner said his stepfather put a foot on Toby Turner's neck and then “stomped on her.”

But the jurors said they didn't believe Sean Turner because of his courtroom demeanor in which he paused before answering questions, and because he had told differing versions of what he saw during the murder investigation.

Brown said she also discredited Sean Turner's testimony because he admitted smoking methamphetamine with his mother.

McLeod said: “I personally felt there were a lot of victims in this case, not just Toby.”