The state jury in the murder-for-hire case against former Wahiawa physician Dennis Ayon deliberated for just one hour Tuesday before returning a guilty verdict to the lesser offense of criminal solicitation to commit third-degree assault.

The crime is a petty misdemeanor punishable by a maximum 30 days in jail, which is the sentence Circuit Judge Karen Ahn assigned after the verdict.

With credit for time already served, Ayon, 49, has more than completed the sentence. He has been in custody on $1 million cash bail since his arrest on Nov. 8, 2010. However, he remains in custody because he has four other criminal cases pending. The bail for those cases is $10 each.

The trial was Ayon’s second for criminal solicitation to commit murder. The first ended in October after jurors deadlocked 8-4 in favor of conviction after just over a day of deliberation.

In both trials, Ayon’s defense was to put his accuser and former patient, Linda Moore, on trial.

Ayon denied the allegation in the first trial; he did not testify in the second.

On the day police arrested him, Moore had reported that Ayon asked her in his office two days earlier to kill his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child. Moore said she then asked Ayon for his ex-girlfriend’s address and telephone number, which he provided her on a Post-it note.

She said Ayon blamed the ex-girlfriend for keeping his son away from him, harming the boy, dragging him to court and for the loss of his house and car.

Moore testified that Ayon asked her to "teach (the ex-girlfriend) a lesson" and to "beat her a–." In return she would be rewarded.

"The fact that the jurors came back so quickly with its verdict leads me to believe that they had serious doubts about the veracity of what Linda Moore said," Ayon’s lawyer Edward Harada said.

Harada portrayed Moore as a jealous, vindictive woman who was trying to get back at Ayon for not only rejecting her romantic advances, but instead making advances on her friend.

Two of Ayon’s other cases are for allegedly violating temporary restraining orders prohibiting him from having contact with his ex-girlfriend and his son. Another case is for allegedly abusing and threatening the ex-girlfriend and harassing a police officer who responded to the alleged incident. The last case is for DUI, reckless driving, operating a vehicle with a suspended driver’s license and for allegedly assaulting the police who followed him to his office.