NEW YORK — A Brooklyn jury convicted ex-cop Joseph Gray of four counts of second-degree manslaughter Friday for running down a family with his minivan last August while drunk.

Gray blinked and pursed his lips as the jury foreman announced each of the guilty verdicts. But after he was remanded, Gray stood up and his hands trembled slightly as he moved them behind his back to allow court officers to handcuff him.

It took the jury of six women and six men less than five hours over two days to find Gray guilty of the most severe of three possible sets of charges connected to the August 4, 2001, deaths. He faces 15 years in prison.

The jury agreed that Gray, a 14-year veteran of the police force, was driving drunk when he ran a red light and slammed into Maria Herrera, 23, and Dilcia Pena, 16, and Herrera's 4-year-old son, Andy, killing them all. A son who died the next day was born to Herrera by emergency Caesarean section as she lay on her deathbed in Brooklyn Memorial Hospital.

Maria Altagracia Pena, center, lost two daughters and two grandsons.

Gray quit the force in disgrace after the collision. In all, 17 officers from the 72nd precinct including the commanding officer were disciplined for either drinking with Gray that day, or for letting the bacchanal occur on their watch. The case raised questions concerning the NYPD's handling of alcoholic officers, and sparked the ire of residents of the mostly working-class, immigrant neighborhood where the collision occurred.

Victor Herrera, the husband of Maria and father of the two boys killed, appeared shell-shocked in court as the verdict was read, but later told reporters he was pleased with the decision.

"Justice has been done," Herrera said. "We knew that he was guilty. He's an a------, that's what he is. My life was destroyed when that guy got in his car drunk and killed my family. I want him to go to jail for 15 years."

Gray's lawyer, Harold Levy, said his client expected a guilty verdict, but was nonetheless disappointed.

"We had hoped that the verdict would be less than manslaughter," Levy said. "I don't like to use the word blame but we think that [the victims'] conduct contributed to [the accident]."

During the two-week trial, jurors were given two different depictions of Joseph Gray: Levy admitted his client's indiscretions but claimed he could have done nothing to avoid the crash; Prosecutors called him an arrogant drunk whose reckless behavior led to the violent deaths of his victims.

The scene of the fatal crash.

Gray's central defense throughout the two-week trial was to shift the blame for the collision to his victims. A 14-year veteran of the same police precinct charged with watching over the Sunset Park, Brooklyn, neighborhood where Herrera and her family lived, Gray admitted to drinking at least 12 beers the day of the collision but argued that he was not drunk.

According to Gray, who took the stand in his own defense Tuesday, Herrera, who was eight and a half months pregnant, and her son and sister jumped out from between a row of construction barrels on his left into the path of his 1996 Ford Windstar minivan.

Levy offered only one other witness to back his client's testimony. An addled, 73-year-old Puerto Rican taxi driver Israel Perez, was unable on the stand to recall how many victims he saw, let alone any distinguishing characteristics including what they were wearing, their gender, or whether any was pregnant.

Levy's two witnesses paled next to the 20 witnesses called by prosecuting attorneys Joseph Petrosino and Maureen McCormick during their six-day case.

The attorneys used 10 cops, three eyewitnesses, and a variety of experts to portray Gray as an arrogant, irresponsible drunk who caromed at more than 50 miles per hour through a red light before impacting the family members, who were en route to Herrera and Pena's mother's house on the other side of Third Avenue.

Lawyers in court Friday.

Petrosino and McCormick also left little room for the jury to consider Gray — who said he thought he was a "conditioned drinker" — anything but soused after a day of partying. The lawyers called a stream of eyewitnesses that said the officer was, in fact, affected by the "four to five" beers he had in the parking lot of the 72nd Precinct, the "two, three, maybe five" he had at the strip club the first time, and the "two to three beers" he admitted to drinking upon his return.

Prosecutors also added strong expert testimony to the eyewitness accounts. A blood alcohol expert testified that Gray had to have downed at least 18 beers that day in order to have had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16 percent four hours after the collision.

At a press conference following the verdict, Petrosino and McCormick said their investigation was hindered by shoddy police work at the accident scene, and that the Brooklyn D.A.'s office has already launched an investigation into police misconduct.

An accident reconstruction specialist calculated from the "throw distance" of the victims that Gray must have been going at least 50 miles per hour when he hit them. And two medical examiners debunked Gray's claim that the victims darted out from his left by analyzing the injuries the victims suffered, concluding that because they suffered greater injuries on their left sides they had to have come from Gray's right.

That the victims came from Gray's right was also the claim of eyewitness Rosa Cintron, who saw the accident from her porch at the corner of 46th Street and Third Avenue. The prosecution's first witness, Cintron, whose shocking 911 call was played twice for the jury, said she saw Herrera crossing in the south crosswalk of 46th Street with her son and sister before the collision.

Residents erected a memorial to the victims near the crash site.

Gray admitted on the stand that if Cintron's testimony were true, he would have had at least five seconds to see the victims walking across the street.

Outside the courthouse in Brooklyn Friday, family members of the victims said they were relieved that a guilty verdict had been reached.

Elbin Pena, a cousin of the victims, and an auxiliary member of the 72nd Precinct, referred to a quote from Aristotle that is posted above Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Anne Feldman's bench: 'Justice is to give to every man his due.' "That's what happened today," Pena said.

Ramona Hernandez, an aunt, said she had no doubt that the jury had made the correct decision. "We're very happy — everything is going to be okay now. I knew he was going to be guilty. Going through everything over and over again, it was difficult."

Oscar Herasme, a lawyer representing Herrera, said he may file a civil suit against the NYPD after the former officer's sentencing on May 23.

Petrosino and McCormick plan to ask Judge Feldman for the maximum sentence, which will put Gray in prison for five to 15 years (the actual balance to be determined by parole proceedings.) "The facts speak for themselves," said McCormick. "From our position, the behavior of the defendant is so egregious that he should get the maximum sentence."

Asked what he would say on behalf of his client at the sentencing, Levy said that he would tell the judge that Gray was a "family man … who unfortunately used poor judgment on one particular day and ruined two families."

Levy said he would ask that Gray receive less than the maximum sentence. "He was a man who got drunk after work," he said.