An ex-Fort Carson soldier facing the death penalty in a 2016 double slaying was convicted Tuesday of first-degree murder and second-degree murder — marking a jury’s rejection of allegations that both killings were premeditated.

Although Glen Law Galloway, 46, remains eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors now face an uphill battle as they lobby his jury to impose it, legal observers say.

“The likelihood of a death sentence has been substantially reduced,” said Colorado Springs attorney Phil Dubois, who has argued other death penalty cases but isn’t affiliated with Galloway’s defense. Citing multiple other Colorado cases in which juries rejected capital punishment, Dubois said anything short of a conviction on all counts marked a setback.

The nine-man, three-woman jury deliberated for three days before returning verdicts, capping six weeks of testimony in El Paso County’s first death penalty case in a decade.

The same jury will decide whether Galloway lives or dies — a process expected to take weeks.

To win the death penalty, prosecutors must spur the jury on to a unanimous decision that it’s the right punishment.

If the jury doesn’t impose death, Galloway will be sentenced to life without parole.

During more than a month of testimony, prosecutors argued that back-to-back killings of Marcus Anderson and Janice Nam were the result of the same plan — to get revenge on Nam, the defendant’s ex-girlfriend, after her testimony in court resulted in a stalking conviction against him, representing Galloway’s first brush with the law.

At the time of the shootings, Galloway was on the run after cutting off an ankle monitor and disappearing in January 2016 a day before he was to be sentenced for stalking Nam.

According to the prosecution, Galloway first killed Anderson, a homeless man with whom he lived while on the run, allegedly to secure Anderson’s “silence” and his pickup. Prosecutors say Galloway needed the truck to drive undetected into Nam’s central Colorado Springs neighborhood, where he broke in through a rear sliding door, climbed the stairs to her bedroom and shot her twice in the head in bed — his promised retribution.

But the panel found that Anderson’s murder wasn’t planned, undercutting the prosecution’s theory of the case. The jury acquitted Galloway of aggravated robbery, finding that Galloway didn’t kill Anderson for his truck, as alleged.

The verdicts were consistent with Galloway’s defense that he killed Anderson during a struggled after the meth- addicted homeless man threatened him with a pistol.

Galloway’s attorneys argued that he then “snapped” and drove to Nam’s home intending to confront her, only to shoot her instead.

Sentencing proceedings began Tuesday after the verdict was announced. The jury first must agree that prosecutors proved death penalty aggravators, including that Galloway killed a witness to a crime, Nam, and that he intentionally killed two people during the same criminal episode.

If the prosecution proves the statutory aggravators, the defense will put on witnesses to present mitigating evidence, including testimony about Galloway’s character before the crimes.

The jury then would be instructed to weigh aggravation vs. mitigation in selecting Galloway’s punishment.

Regardless of their deliberations, any juror could reject the death penalty for any reason, said Dubois.

“The jury decides, regardless of anything, what it wants to do,” he said. “They don’t even have to give a reason. They’re not accountable to anyone except their own conscience.”

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