Garfield Boothe and Nichelle Boothe-Rowe were found guilty Saturday of second-degree murder in the 2011 death of 10-year-old Shakeil Boothe.

Boothe and Boothe-Rowe were convicted by a jury during the second day of deliberations.

The two had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. The verdict means an automatic life sentence for both but the court will determine when each can apply for parole at a sentencing hearing scheduled for May 12.

Boothe was Shakeil’s father and his wife Boothe-Rowe was his stepmom. They were arrested soon after police found the child dead in their Brampton home on May 27, 2011.

Shakeil first came to Canada from Jamaica in 2009 to live with his father.

The jury heard what the house of horrors that actually awaited the little boy.

When he misbehaved, Garfield Boothe took a belt to his son and encouraged his wife to do so as well.

Boothe intensified his discipline and by early 2011 he was chaining Shakeil to his bed every day and hitting once or twice a week.

In the meantime, Boothe had pulled his son out of school.

When the boy tore a page from a Bible that he’d been forced to read aloud in May 2011, Boothe-Rowe told the jury she saw her angry husband chase him up the stairs and stomp on his chest while she begged him to stop.

A few weeks later, Shakeil was forced to sleep in the basement for wetting his bed. He had a black eye at this time, cuts on his legs, injuries to his knuckles and a cold that wouldn’t go away.

On May 26, 2011, Shakeil didn’t respond to Boothe-Rowe’s calls for breakfast. When she went down to the basement, she found him lying lifeless on the floor, still dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his foot blue and cold to her touch.

Instead of calling 911, she phoned her husband at work. She said he wasn’t shocked and insisted that she not call for help.

Instead, they packed and moved all her belongings and those of their infant son into storage. She and the baby would then take a bus to the U.S.

His wife Boothe-Rowe told the court she could not rescue Shakeil from his father because she was terrified of her husband.

Her lawyer Brian Ross said Saturday he found the verdict “disappointing.”

“I was obviously optimistic that the jury would accept the defence of duress so it’s disappointing,” he said after the verdict was passed.

“Nichelle had always admitted responsibility for failing to protect Shakeil and her defence was that she herself was a victim of violence and abuse from Garfield, and because of that, she was relying on the defence of duress,” he continued. “The jury obviously did not accept that.”