It took a Schuylkill County jury less than two hours Wednesday to find Thomas John Petrousky guilty of first degree murder and related charges in the April 28, 2014 bludgeoning death of his roommate, David R. Halaburda, formerly of Barnesville.

President Judge William E. Baldwin ordered a pre-sentence investigation before he sentences Petrousky, 55, who faces life in state prison.Petrousky, who was calm and attentive during the three-day trial, did not visibly react to the verdict. He’ll remain in jail without bail.Defense attorney Michael Stine had aimed to convince the jury of six women and six men that Petrousky was insane at the time of the murder, which happened after Halaburda asked Petrousky to move out of the Frackville-area home they shared.One of Stine’s witnesses, psychiatrist Larry A. Rotenberg, testified on Tuesday that Petrousky suffers from schizo-effective disorder in addition to renal failure, heart disease, and diabetes.Rotenberg testified that Petrousky also has a low IQ.“What the case comes down to is mental illness,” Stine told jurors in his closing argument.Proscutor AJ Serina rebutted Stine’s argument, telling jurors that it was rage, not mental illness, that cost Halaburda his life.“What we have here is anger turned to hatred turned to rage that turned into murder,” Serena told jurors in his closing.Serina countered Stine’s argument that Petrousky acted in self defense, telling jurors that blood spatter evidence showed Halaburda was near the floor while being beaten about the head with a board wielded by Petrousky.He showed jurors color photographs of Halaburda’s battered head, and asked them to imagine the sounds of the board crashing into and fracturing his skull.“This was not self-defense,” Serina said. “This was a brutal, savage, vicious killing.”Jurors apparently agreed.Following closing arguments by Stine and Serina, they listed to Baldwin explain their responsibilities, then left the courtroom at 12:30 p.m.At 2 p.m., they asked Baldwin to clarify the definition of “instrument of crime.”Eighteen minutes later, they had reached their verdicts: Guilty of first-degree murder, third-degree murder, possessing instrument of crime, recklessly endangering another person and harassment, two of aggravated assault and three of simple assault.Serina and First Assistant District Attorney John T. Fegley prosecuted the case.On Wednesday, they called as a witness, psychiatrist Terri Calvert, whom Baldwin dismissed when, under questioning by Stine, she proved unable to clearly explain the two prongs of the M’Naghten rule.That’s the two-pronged standard for legal insanity.After the trial ended, Serina explained the two prongs are that a defendant did not know the nature of his actions, and if he did, that they were wrong.Previous testimony included a physician, a forensic scientist, a pathologist, police, and neighbors of Petrousky and Halaburda, who lived at 256 S. Wylam St., Altamonte, in the Frackville area.According to testimony and court documents, Petrousky killed Halaburda, repeatedly hitting him in the head and neck with a board and his fists, on the morning of April 28, 2014.Less than an hour before police would discover Halaburda’s body, Petrousky removed his dentures and took off his jacket before punching his neighbor James Dellock in the face, kicking him in the back and threatening to shoot his dogs in the head.It was when police took Petrousky’s friendly pit bull back to the house he shared with Halaburda that they discovered the body in a pool of blood in the living room, buried under furniture, magazines and other household items, and with a mounted deer head deliberately placed with its nose to his.