BRENTWOOD – A jury convicted a 22-year-old man Monday of 21 assault and witness-tampering charges for vicious beatings a Derry woman endured between April and September 2007.

Benjamin Ayala, formerly of Lowell, Mass., is facing the prospect of decades in prison.

The woman was strangled, stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver, had her ribs broken and throat slit, according to Assistant County Attorney Patricia Conway. When Ayala slit the woman's throat, he threatened to kill her and then himself, Conway said.

Ayala was living with the victim when the assaults occurred.

AYALA

He was found guilty of first- and second-degree assault and nine counts of witness-tampering. Jurors also found him guilty on several charges of simple assault and a single count of criminal threatening. Ayala was found not guilty of 10 other charges of simple assault.

The verdict in Rockingham County Superior Court came after nearly a week-and-a-half trial.

More prison time could be looming for Ayala. In January, he is facing another trial for allegedly assaulting a corrections officer while he was being held. In that case, prosecutors allege Ayala threw a cup of urine at the officer, which is a felony offense.

Conway said one of the challenges in prosecuting the assault case was that the attacks were reported about six months after they happened, so not all of the injuries could be cataloged with the same detail as if they were reported right away. Derry police began investigating when the woman came to the police department seeking a domestic violence petition against Ayala.

Ayala began calling his girlfriend from the county jail after he was arrested, pleading with her not to testify against him at trial, Conway said. He made those pleas during a series of phone calls from the Rockingham County jail between September 2008 and January 2009.

"He asked her to duck the (court) summons and said he would find her a place to stay," Conway said. The victim visited him at jail, she said.

Conway and Assistant County Attorney Geoffrey Ward called upon medical doctors to testify, along with an expert on domestic violence, to tell jurors about how victims act after they are abused. The jury, made up of eight men and four women, began deliberating late Tuesday.

Defense lawyer Mark Osborne asked jurors to question the veracity of the victim's testimony during trial and the evidence presented by prosecutors. Osborne said he felt the jury did a fair job in assessing the evidence in the case.

"It was a lengthy trial, so I just appreciate the work that they did in the case," he said.

Ayala is scheduled for sentencing in February. The two first-degree assault convictions he was convicted of can carry prison terms of 7 to 15 years each. The second-degree assault and witness tampering convictions are punishable by 3 to 7 years in state prison.

Judge John Lewis, who presided over the trial, decided that Ayala will be held without bail until his sentencing hearing.