Jurors on Tuesday convicted a 21-year-old Kansas University student of trying to rape his 26-year-old roommate as she slept on a couch.

“I’m pleased for the victim that the jury reached this verdict,” Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney said. “It was difficult for her even to decide to report this … and it’s a struggle to go through the process, so I’m pleased for her.”

A jury of eight women and four men deliberated for about three hours in Douglas County District Court before finding Gregory D. Black guilty of attempted rape. The incident happened April 6 at an apartment in the 900 block of Illinois Street, prosecutors said.

It wasn’t in dispute that Black began touching the woman when she lay down on the couch after coming home from a night of drinking. Instead, much of the argument in the case dealt with whether the woman was able to give consent and could have stopped the fondling from happening.

“Under no circumstances did she consent,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Brad Burke said. “She was sleeping. She’d been out drinking. … When are you most vulnerable? When you’re sleeping.”

Defense attorney John Frydman questioned whether the woman was truly unconscious or too intoxicated to know what was happening. Frydman suggested the woman had been flirting with Black and might have been lying waiting to see what he would do.

“Was she entrapping him?” Frydman asked jurors.

Because consent — not whether the event actually happened — was a key issue in attorneys’ arguments, some were puzzled by the attempted-rape verdict. Prosecutors had asked the jury to convict Black of rape, which under Kansas law includes any kind of vaginal penetration. Instead jurors settled on the lesser charge.

Frydman shook his head and said, “That doesn’t make sense” as he left the courtroom.

Judge Paula Martin set Black’s sentencing for Nov. 19. Attempted rape, a level-three felony, carries a minimum sentence of 55 months in prison under state-sentencing guidelines.

A judge can grant a lesser sentence if there are “substantial and compelling reasons.”