PHOENIX (CNS) -- Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien, resigned head of the Phoenix Diocese, was found guilty Feb. 17 of charges of leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

After deliberating just six-and-a-half hours over two days, the eight jurors told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Stephen Gerst in a packed courtroom that they unanimously agreed the bishop was guilty.

Conviction carries a sentence ranging from probation to as long as three years and nine months in prison.

Bishop O'Brien, 68, had admitted driving the car that struck and killed 43-year-old Jim Reed on a dark Phoenix street June 14. Although witnesses said a second car also hit Reed, no other vehicle has ever been traced to the accident.

On June 18, two days after police arrested him on the felony charge, Bishop O'Brien resigned as head of the diocese, a position he had held for 21 years.

In statements to police and in testimony during his trial, Bishop O'Brien said he had no idea what had hit his windshield with a loud crack as he drove home from a confirmation ceremony. At his trial, the bishop said when he couldn't see any obvious cause for the damage, he decided to drive the five minutes to his home, rather than stop.

At the trial he said he concluded hours later that his car must have been hit by a rock or a dog and that it never occurred to him to report the incident to police. Witnesses to the accident followed the Buick that first hit Reed and gave police the license plate number. The plate was traced to the Diocese of Phoenix and Bishop O'Brien first learned about 24 hours later that police wanted to question him about the accident.

The jury had received the case Feb. 12 and deliberated that afternoon. The next morning, Feb. 13, Gerst dismissed one juror who had to leave for personal reasons and substituted one of the three alternate jurors who also had sat through the three weeks of testimony. Jury selection and various minor delays stretched the trial to nearly five weeks.

The judge instructed the panel to "start over" with the new juror. They spent four-and-a-half hours deliberating Feb. 13, before adjourning for the three-day Presidents Day weekend. After just two more hours of deliberations Feb. 17, they sent Gerst a message that they had reached a verdict.

"This case is really about 10 seconds," defense attorney Tom Henze said in his closing argument Feb.12, "the 10 seconds surrounding the accident.

"Make no mistake ... the state is telling you that Bishop O'Brien is a liar," Henze told jurors. But Henze urged jurors to focus on two fundamental questions: "What did he know? And when did he know it?"

Henze told jurors the bishop's behavior following the accident -- driving his car with a battered windshield in public, to both to a church function and a family dinner -- showed Bishop O'Brien had nothing to hide.

"Damned if you do and damned if you don't" is how Henze characterized the bishop's predicament following the accident.

The defense argued Bishop O'Brien's actions in the 36 hours following the accident until the time he was interviewed by Phoenix Police detectives were "not legally relevant," because at the time of the accident the bishop was unaware he had struck a pedestrian, Henze said.

He concluded by urging jurors not to hold Bishop O'Brien to a different standard because of his former leadership position within the church. "This isn't a popularity contest, this is serious stuff," he said.

In his final rebuttal, prosecutor Anthony Novitsky made one final appeal to jurors: "You know what is right or wrong; to tell Thomas O'Brien what he did was 'OK' is wrong."

Earlier in the week, the retired spiritual leader of more than 400,000 Catholics told prosecutor Mitch Rand he didn't know what struck his windshield.

"It never entered my mind that it was a person; I wish it had," a visibly shaken Bishop O'Brien said. "I just felt terrible about this."

During the bishop's second day on the witness stand, a confrontational Rand asked him if he was sorry he had been caught or if he was sorry he'd hit Reed.

The bishop responded, "Oh, Mr. Rand, I felt terrible and shocked because I could have been involved in a fatal accident."

Witnesses at the trial described Reed's behavior shortly before he wandered into traffic in mid-block, and told of watching the accident occur. Police and rescue workers recalled their efforts at the scene. Experts in accident reconstruction, forensics, lighting and medicine gave their perspective on events. And Bishop O'Brien's sister, nephew, secretary and several priests, including one of the diocese's vicars general, described their interactions with the bishop in the two days following the accident.

One thing the jury did not hear testimony about was Bishop O'Brien's legal settlement with the Maricopa County prosecutor's office two weeks before the accident. He signed an immunity deal that prevented his indictment on charges of protecting priests who molested children. Sexual abuse cases in the diocese and the immunity deal had been the subject of intense media coverage for months.