Having appealed to the jury's emotions, and having offered the case for self-defense, Fielder closed in on the issue of Ada's sanity, as 'the law has neither power, nor desire to punish the irresponsible.' He recounted for the jury the testimony of Drs. Baird and Stephens and contended, 'Her poor brain was like a seething volcano; it was like an open powder house; it was then, ah, it was then, gentleman, that Jack Brown purposely, wickedly, lit the fatal fuse.' Rynerson, in his closing argument for the prosecution, scoffed that Grant County defense attorneys habitually sought changes of venue to Doña Ana County, which enjoyed the reputation of seating juries that would free clients. He expected this jury to 'wipe that slander out of existence and preserve the fair name of Doña Ana County.' His words, the Enterprise observed, brought glares from Hulmes, 'filled to the brim with indignation and as angry as she could be.' Yet, the newspaper judged, 'Her physiognomy and appearance show her to be well bred and well raised until the time she had unfortunately fallen.'

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District Attorney Wade followed Rynerson, and for three-quarters of an hour he summarized the prosecution's case. Hulmes, he said, had committed 'a dastardly and unprovoked murder.' The jury retired to debate. Reporters later learned that none of the jury members favored acquittal, while several preferred the greatest penalty — hanging. Others wanted a sentence of 15 years, a couple opted for 10 years, and only one preferred a three-year sentence. Nonetheless, the argument of the one proved persuasive. At 8 o'clock in the evening, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and recommended a sentence of three years in the New Mexico Territorial Penitentiary at Santa Fe. When the verdict came in, the composure that Hulmes had maintained throughout the trial finally failed her; she broke down and cried. Later, at the Rio Grande Hotel, she fell into hysterical convulsions. It took two hours for a doctor to revive her.

Sheriff Harvey Whitehall of Grant County transported Ada Hulmes to Santa Fe on October 30, 1889. After breakfast at the Exchange Hotel, they took a carriage to the penitentiary. 'A glimpse of the woman as she stepped into the carriage at the hotel revealed a rather prepossessing face; brown hair and blue eyes over which fell the shade of a jaunty black hat,' a nearby reporter noted. 'She wore a black silk dress and a fifty inch seal coat which set off her plump figure in the nobbiest style.' The warden confined prisoner No. 324 in the women's cell on the third floor. Through a heavily grated window on the east side of her 14-by-14 room, she could catch a glimpse of the city. Ada, the only female prisoner then at the penitentiary, required a personal matron, Mrs. H.F. Swope, the wife of the captain of the guards.

Soon after her admission, the Albuquerque Daily Citizen asserted that Ada Hulmes enjoyed 'more comforts and privileges than any other convict in the land.' The newspaper described her cell at the penitentiary as a 'large, airy apartment on the third floor of the main building, entirely separate from the prison proper, and its windows command a fine view of the Santa Fe valley.' The Citizen decried her enjoyment of a carpeted floor, a piano and a $60-per-month matron to see to her needs: 'The contrast between the treatment of this murderess and a boy who is in for stealing a calf is very marked.' W.A. 'Pink' Leonard, editor of the Enterprise, read the report, bemoaned the $60 salary 'to attend to the every want of this nymph du pave,' and proposed that the penitentiary be closed and that Eastern states be hired to keep New Mexico Territory's prisoners 'at one-half the cost to the tax payers.'

As other editorials followed the lead of the Citizen and the Enterprise, New Mexico Territory's citizens also began to write. One complained to Las Vegas' Optic that Ada's treatment encouraged crime. Amid the charges, in early December New Mexico's board of prison commissioners responded directly to Max Frost, editor of Santa Fe's Daily New Mexican, and labeled all the assertions false. Hulmes' room in the women's ward 'has been the place of confinement of female prisoners since the establishment of the prison, and was constructed for this purpose.' They further informed Frost that the matron's salary was $30 a month and that the territory did not pay for the piano. 'The Santa Fe correspondent of the Optic knew he told a falsehood pure, simply and malicious when he wrote the communication,' claimed the commissioners. The explanation seemed to satisfy. Even Pink Leonard of the Enterprise, living where the crime was committed, agreed 'the taxpayers have no particular complaint to make.' Six months passed before the chastised Optic broke the story of a new scandal.

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