Two self-styled bodyguards who last year stabbed a homeless man to death in the now-disbanded tent city north of downtown were convicted of second-degree murder Monday in Sacramento Superior Court.

J. Douglas Halford, 66, and Mark Ray Hernandez, 44, had been protecting a Basler Street man who had been threatened and physically attacked by a local denizen.

But when they followed a different would-be assailant up the levee to the American River bike trail and killed yet another man in an ensuing knife fight, jurors found they strayed beyond the legal confines of self-defense.

The guilty verdict came in the death of Michael Lawrence Wentworth, 47, a popular homeless man in the tent encampment behind the Blue Diamond almond plant who was sometimes known as Michael Tinius and went by the nickname of "Gremlin."

"I left it in God's hands, that his will be done," Wentworth's 72-year-old mother, Marian Demend, of Everett, Wash., said after the verdict. "I truly believe it was."

Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore said the case "shows that violence is never the answer when a simple phone call to the police is an option."

Halford and Hernandez had moved in as house guests of Danny Hughes, the former drummer in the Steve Miller Band and six-time California State Fair cookie baking champion, who was having trouble with a local street person. Hughes testified that the two saved his life once when the antagonist broke into his house and threatened to kill him with a ball-peen hammer.

But it was a different man who presented a problem when he showed up in front of Hughes' house on a bicycle on April 30, 2008. The bicyclist was yelling and screaming and waving a knife, Hughes testified.

According to testimony at trial, the visitor was upset because Halford and Hernandez had jostled and kicked one of his homeless buddies.

The man on the bike eventually left, and Halford and Hernandez followed him up the levee into the tent city, where some homeless people were drinking beer beneath a clump of trees called "the snake pit."

Halford and Hernandez approached, and the fight was on. When it was over, Gremlin was dead.

C. Emmett Mahle, the attorney who represented Halford, and Hernandez's lawyer, Bob Blasier, argued that the killing was a matter of self-defense.

"I'm really disappointed in this verdict," Mahle said. "I'd hoped they'd look more closely at the self-defense issues. Talking to the jury foreperson and others, they didn't really consider that."

Blasier called the verdict "outrageous." He said his client "didn't really do anything."

Hernandez was convicted on the theory of aiding and abetting the slaying. Ore, the prosecutor, said evidence indicated Hernandez stabbed Wentworth once in the back, but that it was a nonfatal blow.

Jury foreman Jason Johns said the panel concluded that Halford and Hernandez knew they were asking for a seriously violent confrontation when they went up the levee from Hughes' house.

Hernandez had knives, according to testimony, while Halford carried a stick or a club that Johns likened to a baseball bat.

"By pursuing (the bicyclist), they knew they were going after someone who has a knife," Johns said. "They have to know there is a potential for a knife fight that can result in death."

Judge Marjorie Koller scheduled sentencing for Halford and Hernandez for July 10.

Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321-1141.