It took the jury in Colton Pitonyak’s murder trial just an hour and 20 minutes to return with a guilty verdict. A few hours later, they decided he'd spend the next 55 years in prison.

Jurors convicted the former University of Texas student of murder in the shooting and mutilation death of a 21-year-old woman.

Pitonyak, 24, testified he didn't remember killing Jennifer Cave in August 2005, but that it must have been unintentional.

Pitonyak told jurors he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol the night Cave died and conceded that nobody else could have done it. Her body was found in a bathtub at his apartment with her head and hands cut off.

Cave's mother filed a missing person report after her daughter's roommate said she never came home from her date with Pitonyak. He was later located in Mexico with another woman, Laura Hall. Defense lawyers painted Hall as the person whose idea it was to cut up the body and flee to Mexico.

Prosecutors portrayed the defendant as a drug-dealing junkie.

The jury could have sentenced Pitonyak to life in prison. Instead they settled on 55 years and no monetary fine. Since it was not a capital murder charge, he could not be given a death sentence.

Judge Wilford Flowers ruled Monday morning that the jury could not consider the lesser offenses of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

Pitonyak took the stand in his own defense Friday. In his testimony, he admitted to killing Cave, but said he was not responsible for dismembering her body.

Pitonyak said he was "messed up" when it happened and could not detail the events of the evening very well. On the stand, he said he did not “intentionally and knowingly” cause Cave’s death.

The Little Rock, Arkansas, native showed little emotion during the trial. He finally shed a few tears Monday when his father took the stand and talked about visiting Colton in jail after the murder.