A Texas woman who ran down her cheating husband with a Mercedes Benz committed murder, a jury decided Thursday.

Clara Harris, 45, stood still as the verdict was read, flanked by members of her defense team.

Harris first confronted her orthodontist husband, David Harris, in the lobby of a Houston hotel on July 24, 2002.  Harris emerged from an elevator with his mistress and receptionist, Gail Bridges. The altercation quickly moved into the parking lot, where prosecution witnesses said Harris rammed her husband and circled around to crush his body.

Victim David Harris

The jury of nine women and three men convicted Harris of the most serious of a range of charges, including the lesser charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.  Jurors could still show lenience in choosing a sentence for Harris, a process that will begin later Thursday morning.

In her closing argument, prosecutor Mia Magness recalled the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses to the parking lot killing who said that Harris not only hit her husband with the front of her late-model luxury sedan — but that she also ran over his body repeatedly.

"When you run a person over again and again and again, your intent is to hurt them. Your intent is to kill them," she said.

Harris' defense attorney, George Parnham, urged jurors to consider the marital stress that prefaced the killing, and offered Gail Bridges as the true villian.  "I don't care how you slice it, she is a home wrecker," said the attorney.

Clara Harris left her pocketbook on the seat of the car she used to mow down her husband.

Harris, who took the stand in her own defense, said she was crestfallen when her husband told her she didn't measure up to his mistress. Harris said she bought lingerie, scheduled a breast implant surgery, and joined an expensive gym in the days before the final confrontation — which she maintained was an accident.

Lindsey Harris, David Harris' daughter from another marriage, testified otherwise.  Harris was in the Mercedes that evening and told the court that Clara Harris said, "I'm going to hit him," before stomping on the gas pedal.

After nearly seven hours of deliberation Wednesday, jurors asked for a readback of testimony concerning a statement Harris gave to police after the alleged murder, during which Harris said she wanted to "separate" Harris from his mistress, and that she intended to hurt David Harris, not kill him.

The important distinction between the three major charges was Harris' intent.

"At this point it is time for you to call her for what she is, and that is a murderer," said Magness.