WATERLOO • Jurors will return to deliberations in court this morning in Waterloo after they met for several hours Wednesday without reaching a decision on whether Christopher Coleman strangled his wife and two sons.

The delay increases the likelihood of delivering a verdict today, the second anniversary of the discovery of the bodies.

Coleman, 34, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his wife, Sheri, 31, and sons Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, in their beds at home in Columbia, Ill.

Prosecutors claim it was part of a plan to marry his lover and not expose adultery that could have cost him his job as bodyguard for televangelist Joyce Meyer.

The 10 women and two men of the jury were sent out to consider the charges about 3 p.m. Wednesday, although they may have spent the first hour or so taking a break and getting settled. Judge Milton Wharton sent them back to their homes shortly after 8 p.m., with orders to reconvene at 10 a.m. today.

Although it is a Monroe County trial, the group was selected in Perry County, farther from the glare of publicity about the case, and is bused back and forth from the Pinckneyville, Ill., area.

Neither Christopher Coleman's family nor Sheri Coleman's family would comment as they left the courthouse Wednesday night.

If Coleman is convicted, the trial would move into the death penalty phase, with prosecutors and defense lawyers presenting evidence for and against his execution. If the jury rejected a death sentence, the only alternate would be life in prison without parole.

There appears no chance that Coleman could be executed anyway. Gov. Pat Quinn, who signed legislation barring imposition of death sentences after June 30, has already commuted all the existing capital sentences to life in prison and said he will do the same with any that come along in the meantime.

Monroe County State's Attorney Kris Reitz pressed the case for death anyway, which provides a state subsidy for the costs of prosecuting and defending the charges.

The defense consisted of two expert witnesses Wednesday morning, called to rebut prosecution experts who claimed there were similarities between Coleman's known handwriting and writing patterns and words written in red paint at the murder scene and in mysterious threats the family received. The defense witnesses said a scientific correlation could not be made.

Coleman chose not to testify.

Prosecutors made much of the obscenity-laced threats, alleging that Coleman created them himself as part of a murder plan to divert detectives once the killings occurred.

Computer experts testified that emailed threats were created on Coleman's own laptop, using his password and an anonymous email account. The defense tried to raise questions of whether some kind of remote control could have been used, but prosecution witnesses dismissed it.

Coleman told police his family was fine when he awoke at 5:30 a.m. on May 5, 2009, put on exercise clothes and went for an early morning workout at a gym in south St. Louis County.

But Dr. Michael Baden, a nationally known forensic pathologist from New York, testified in the trial last week that photos and reports indicated the victims were dead by 3 a.m. or earlier.

The bodies were found by police, who discovered an open window after Coleman called a detective who lives across the street shortly before 7 a.m. Coleman said he was worried on the trip home from the gym because nobody was answering the phone and asked the neighbor to check on his family.

The prosecutor contended that Coleman killed his family to start a new life with his wife's onetime best friend, Tara Lintz of Largo, Fla.

Meyer testified at the trial by video deposition that if she knew of the adultery, it could have cost Coleman the job.

Lintz told the jury that she and Coleman became involved months before the killing and planned to marry. She said Coleman told her he planned to serve divorce papers on what turned out to be the day of the murders.

Prosecutors brought in Baden after Dr. Raj Nanduri, who performed the autopsies, declined to estimate a time of death, saying there were too many variables. When pressed at trial by Reitz, Nanduri said it was likely between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.

Although Coleman claimed to be worried about his family as he drove home that morning, an AT&T employee testified that cellphone records showed he did not take a direct route back.

A police witness said Coleman had purchased red paint with the same formula as profane taunts found sprayed at the murder scene.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Reitz told the jury Coleman "backed himself into a corner" by promising to divorce his wife to marry Lintz when it could jeopardize his career.

As several spectators cried, Reitz said Sheri Coleman had struggled for her life and was strangled first. Testimony indicated that she had a black eye and ligature marks on her neck and chin. The prosecutor said the commotion didn't wake the boys because "that was just Mom and Dad."

Then Reitz talked of Coleman entering the bedrooms of his sleeping sons. "When the killer reached for them, they didn't get up and run," the prosecutor said. "Why would they run?" he asked. "It was just Dad."

Jim Stern, one of Coleman's defense attorneys, put forth a passionate closing argument, saying that prosecutors only used Baden because their own pathologist refused to affix an incriminating time of death.

"Dr. Nanduri got thrown under the bus by the state," Stern said. "They race off to New York and get Dr. Baden."

Stern asked jurors to remember his client's family background and work as a trusted bodyguard. "People like that don't suddenly wake up and slaughter his family," Stern said. He acknowledged that Coleman was having an affair but said so do a lot of other people.

The lawyer also reminded the jury that Coleman notified police of the threats made against his family in the months before the murders. "How often does a defendant go to police to investigate himself?" Stern asked.

He complained that the case was entirely circumstantial — with no physical evidence linking Coleman to the crime.

Stern pleaded with jurors to think long and hard because, "You can't undo your decision."

Several pieces of potential evidence came to light before the murder trial but were not presented to the jury.

They include a video recorder faceplate found on part of the Jefferson Barracks Bridge, over which Coleman drove to a gym the morning the bodies were found.

Officials said it was consistent with the recorder missing from a security system in the victims' home. The discovery left an implication that the device hit the structure while being tossed into the Mississippi River and the piece broke off.

Also located along Coleman's route — but not mentioned in court — were a plastic glove stained with red paint and a piece of orange twine tied in a way that resembled a noose. The victims were strangled with an unspecified ligature. Similar orange twine bound straw outside the Coleman house.

Presumably, forensic tests on those items failed to link them directly to the defendant. Since they were found along the closest route back to the bulk of the St. Louis area population, it meant that anyone who killed the family might have discarded them there.

Tim O'Neil of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.