CLARKESVILLE, GA - The future for three Georgia men now includes life in prison without parole, for the 2004 murder of an 18-year-old man. At the time of the crime, all four were incarcerated at the Lee Arrendale State Prison in Alto.

A Habersham County jury ended a weeklong trial Friday in Clarkesville with murder convictions for Marquce Butler, 22, and Maurice Tobler, 24. Both were also convicted of conspiracy to commit a crime. Tobler was also convicted of aggravated sodomy.

In February 2004, Butler, Tobler and Travis McLeod, 25, participated in the strangulation and murder of Wayne Boatwright Jr.

McLeod was already sentenced to life in prison for an unrelated crime; he was 16 when he used a shotgun to murder a man in Toombs County. He avoided a death-penalty trial for the 2004 crime by pleading guilty in December 2005 to murder and conspiracy to commit a crime, said Mike Crawford, district attorney for the Mountain Judicial Circuit.

The case ended Friday with the jury verdicts against Butler and Tobler. Jurors needed about two hours to convict Butler and Tobler, who were tried together.

"I think justice was done by the jury," Mr. Crawford said. "It's a sad case."

According to court records, the three men conspired in 2004 to enter Boatwright's cell, choke him into unconsciousness and have sex with him. The men had initially been accused of necrophilia or sexual relations with a dead person. But Mr. Crawford said the jury determined the men had sex with Boatwright prior to his death.

Butler was already serving a 10-year sentence for each count of aggravated assault, attempted armed robbery, kidnapping and armed robbery for events that occurred during 2000 in Chatham County. He was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.

Tobler was also sentenced Friday, to a second life sentence without the chance of parole, Mr. Crawford said.

The sentence was more severe because Tobler was already serving a life sentence for rape. He had also been sentenced to 20 years each for burglary and aggravated sodomy.

In 1996 in Telfair County, the then 14-year-old Tobler was committing a burglary when he choked a 20-year-old woman into unconsciousness, then raped and sodomized her in the presence of her 6-month-old child, Mr. Crawford said.