YULEE — It took about four hours, but a Nassau County jury ruled this evening that a Bryceville man beat his wife to death with a hammer a month after he rescued her and their newborn son from a burning mobile home.

Michael Ratley, 25, faces a possible death sentence now that he's been convicted of first-degree murder in the 2007 death of his wife Effie, 29. She was killed in her bedroom at his parents' house, where the family was living after their home burned down.

The judge said the jury will return the week of Aug. 17 to recommend a sentence of death or life.

Joy Williams, Effie Ratley's mother, said the jury understood what her family knew the moment they saw her in the intensive care unit at the hospital. She asked that people pray for the Ratleys as well as her family.

"It's not a time of celebration … but it is a time of validation," Williams said.

Lawyers wrapped up closing arguments about 12:45, after which Circuit Judge Robert Foster instructed jurors on the law.

Ratley's attorney, Robert Willis, proposed that an intruder who had tormented the Ratleys in the rural community sneaked into the house, killed Effie Ratley then framed her husband by placing the murder weapon, gloves and bloody paper towls inside her husband's pickup truck. He argued that his client wouldn't have put those items there then readily allowed police to search the vehicle.

"Of all the places in the world he could have put those items, according to the state, he puts them in his own truck," Willis said. The night before the murder, Michael Ratley testified, he was hit in the head by someone as he entered his parents' barn.

But prosecutors called the intruder theory unreasonable and argued that Ratley made the barn attack up to set the stage for premeditated murder. They asked jurors to question why the so-called intruder never stole anything or sexually assaulted Effie Ratley the night she was killed, and why that person would bother to try to frame Michael Ratley by hiding the hammer and other items in a storage compartment in the pickup's cab.

"This was not Hollywood. This was Bryceville," said Assistant State Attorney John Guy. "He had set it up to look like an intruder.

Effie Rachel Williams Ratley