Clayton Jerrod Ellington, who bludgeoned his wife and 2-year-old twin sons with a hammer in 2006, will die for their murders.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Anne Workman sentenced Ellington to death Wednesday after a jury convicted him Oct. 18 and returned a death penalty verdict for him on Tuesday.

Ellington, 31, was convicted of beating 31-year-old Berna Ellington, his wife of three years, and their sons Christian and Cameron Ellington to death with the claw end of a hammer in their family home in Lithonia.

Before Workman announced the sentence, Berna Ellington's cousin rushed up to Ellington and punched him several times in the head and neck before sheriff's deputies wrestled him out of the courtroom.

Workman, who told Ellington she agreed with the guilty verdicts, said he "slaughtered" his family. She scheduled his execution for the week of Dec. 2. Georgia law requires defense appeals, which could delay his execution for years. Public defender Darryl W. Queen, who represented Ellington, did not return phone calls.

Ellington, a South Carolina native, is the first person to be sentenced to death in DeKalb County since 1989, when Willie James Hall was sentenced to die for stabbing his wife to death. In 2004, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles commuted his sentence to life in prison.

At a press conference after the verdict, DeKalb District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming said the decision to pursue the death penalty is never easy.

"Given the facts of this case and the heinous nature of the crime, a man slaughtering his entire family and then in a chilling and methodical way covering it up, we determined that seeking the ultimate penalty fit the facts," she said.

On the night of May 17, 2006, Ellington called 911 to say he found his family dead on his return home from a baseball game.

Police officers found a blood-soaked scene with a trail of blood from Berna Ellington's body downstairs to an upstairs room where she had laid out clothes for herself and her sons to wear the next day.

Christian and Cameron, in matching red pajamas, lay dead in their cribs with similar blows to their heads.

Christian was face up with his eyes open, as if he saw the attack coming.

Keyes Fleming said that all three murders were committed with the same hammer. She said Ellington committed the murders because he was obsessed with a new girlfriend for whom he wanted to leave his wife.

Clayton and Berna Ellington had known each other most of their lives. They grew up in Charleston, S.C., and attended Burke High School there before marrying in 2003.

Berna, a chemist, graduated two years before Clayton. At the time of the murders he was unemployed after losing his job at a Stonecrest restaurant.

Bernard Judge, Berna's father, said the past two years have been hard on him and his family. He apologized to Judge Workman for the cousin's attack on Ellington.

"People would look at you and say, 'Go on, get on with life,'" he said. "But no, we couldn't do that and now we can find some peace in our hearts." Judge, an associate minister at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Charleston, said hearing the gruesome details of the crime was tough.

"It's almost like throwing salt on the wound," he said during the district attorney's press conference. "I always pictured in my mind what my daughter and grandchildren went through."

During the trial defense lawyers said that Ellington's wife murdered the children in a fit of rage, because she believed that he was going to leave her for another woman.

Judge said that the jury saw the true facts of the crime.

"Her name has been cleared," he said. "She is not the person they said she was. She was a rising star in this community."

Judge thanked the DA's office and the jury.

"Justice has prevailed," he said.