After a five-day trial it took only an hour for a jury in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma, to convict 17-year-old Chancey Luna of the murder of Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian who had been studying in America on a baseball scholarship.

The jury recommended Luna serve life without parole. He will be sentenced in June.

After Luna was led away in cuffs, Mr Lane's father, Peter, said the verdict meant the process was now behind the family.

"It doesn't change the fact that we don't take Chris home, it doesn't change the fact of what happened."

It wasn't a good result or a bad result, he said, just a result.

Equally composed, Mr Lane's mother, Donna, told reporters: "This naughty boy [Luna], he's now never going to do this to any other family."

But Luna's mother was devastated.

"They got what they wanted. They took my son and now my heart is black," she said through tears.

"My son was 16 years old. It was not meant to be. My son is not a killer."

Luna is one of three boys co-accused of murdering Lane on August 16, 2013.

Police and prosecutors said the boys had decided to kill Lane out of boredom after they saw him jog by.

The driver, Michael DeWayne Jones, now 19, pleaded  guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea bargain, but refused to testify for the prosecution. He is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

James "Bug" Edwards Jr, now 17, testified that he was a passenger in the car when it swerved toward Lane, and Luna fired the shot. Edwards testified as part of a plea agreement in which a first-degree murder charge against him was reduced to being an accessory after the fact.

Chris Lane had been living in America while studying at East Central University in Ada, a few hours drive away through the Oklahoma countryside.

On the day of his death he and his girlfriend, Sarah Harper, had been staying in Duncan, where Ms Harper's parents lived.

The two went to a nearby golf club where Ms Harper worked, and after playing together for awhile she started work and he returned to her parents home, before going out for a jog. This is when he crossed paths with the three boys in their car.

The boys followed Lane before Luna shot him in the back and then sped away, pausing in a carpark of a Mexican restaurant to hide the gun under the bonnet.

Police discovered the identity of at least one of them within hours, perhaps even minutes, after an officer recognised the car in the Mexican restaurant's security camera footage.

They were arrested in that day.

Luna's defence lawyers say they do not know the motive, though they do not deny that he shot Lane.

In closing arguments, defence attorney Jim Berry noted more than once that Luna was only 16 at the time of the shooting. "They [boys] work on impulse, hormones, whatever," the attorney said. "They do not make a rational decision as you would in your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s."

The senselessness of their crime appalled people not only in Australia and in Duncan, but across America.

It stirred the debate over the accessibility of guns in America, and the issue of tense race relations.

The former deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer, said publicly it was time for Australians to consider not travelling to America until it introduced more controls on gun ownership. Time magazine published an opinion piece calling for more discussion about the high rate of crime among young African-American men.

In Duncan in the days following there was shock, and a sense of community shame.

A friend of the Harper family told Fairfax media at the time, "He was hurt on our watch."

Shop owners hung green and gold ribbons on their doorways, fundraisers were started for Lane's family and a community memorial service was held at a local school. Around town people kept saying, "This is not Duncan, Oklahoma."

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