BOSTON (AP) – A jury on Monday convicted a man of murdering a pregnant 14-year-old girl – six months after a different jury acquitted the girl’s boyfriend of the gruesome slaying that ended with the girl buried alive.

Lord Hampton, 25, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the Sept. 28, 1999, slaying of Chauntae Jones and her unborn child. Jones was eight months pregnant when she disappeared just weeks after starting eighth grade.

Jones’ body was found more than a month later, buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of the old Boston State Hospital. She had been stabbed, beaten with a rock and buried alive.

Kyle Bryant, Hampton’s lifelong friend, was acquitted in April of identical charges in a verdict that infuriated the victim’s family and friends.

“I wish they had the death sentence – I’d pull the switch,” Pamela Jones, Chauntae’s mother, said outside the courtroom. “His friend should have got it, too. Both of them should have got life.”

Each man fingered the other, but both were prosecuted under a law saying participants in a joint criminal venture are equally to blame, even if only one actually did the killing.

Judge Nancy Staffier-Holtz denied a defense motion after the verdict to lessen the sentence, dismissing attorney Randy Gioia’s plea for leniency on the grounds that Hampton had a hard upbringing and “was not the main antagonist” in the murder.

“Clearly, the jury disagreed with that,” Staffier-Holtz told Gioia. “It was murder, cold-blooded, plain and simple.”

Shawannika Jones, 38, speaking to the court on behalf of her family, said Hampton should have helped them locate her cousin’s body in the weeks after the murder.

“Now he’s crying,” she said, looking at Hampton. “He feels what we felt. He’s going to rot in hell. He’s going to get what he deserves.”

During Hampton’s trial, Assistant District Attorney David Meier repeatedly described Hampton and Bryant as “two men together with a purpose and a plan” who plotted every detail of the crime together, then carried it out together.

Meier said they “together butchered that 14-year-old girl, using a rock, using a brick, using a knife, using a shovel.” During closing arguments, the prosecutor showed the jury an X-ray of Jones’ fetus from her autopsy.

On an audio tape played for the jury, Hampton said Bryant stabbed Jones, dumped her face-first in a shallow grave and then jumped on her back.

On the tape, Hampton admitted that he helped pile dirt on Jones while she was still alive. But on the witness stand he said he was miles away when she was killed.

Hampton testified that he made a false confession because he had been interrogated by police for hours and believed they would let him go home if he told them what they wanted to hear.

Bryant, the father of Jones’ baby, told police it was Hampton who actually killed Jones. He said he stood by as Hampton tried to sexually assault Jones, then choked her, stabbed her with a six-inch steak knife, and bludgeoned her as she yelled, “Kyle, help me!”

Bryant said Hampton decided to kill Jones as a favor to him and hoped he would repay him by killing a man in Roxbury.

Gioia said Hampton was scapegoated by prosecutors eager to hold someone responsible for the horrific crime.

“I do feel like he wasn’t on an equal basis with the other person,” Gioia said after the verdict.

Gioia said Hampton had no reason to kill Jones, but Bryant did. Three months before Jones was killed, a juvenile court judge threatened to prosecute Bryant on statutory rape charges for getting her pregnant. Jones was 13 when she became pregnant; Bryant was 17.

The first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. Staffier-Holtz denied Gioia’s motion to have the sentences run consecutively.