A South Texas jury has sentenced former San Antonio criminal defense attorney Mark Benavides to 80 years in prison for having sex with his clients in exchange for legal services.

Benavides, 48, of San Antonio, was convicted last week of six counts of continuous trafficking of persons, a first-degree felony, and faced a prison sentence of 25 to 99 years.

Benavides was arrested in 2015 on multiple counts of sexual assault and compelling prostitution after San Antonio police alleged he forced his clients to have sex with him to pay for legal services—sometimes inside the Bexar County Courthouse. Benavides was also accused of recording his encounters.

The lawyer later surrendered his law license in lieu of discipline from the State Bar of Texas in December 2016 after he was indicted on 35 felony counts earlier that year. Because of pretrial publicity, Benavides' criminal trial was moved from San Antonio to Floresville.

At the conclusion of his weeklong trial, prosecutors urged jurors to give Benavides a life sentence, arguing his case was about “forced sex, not just about legal services” according to a report in the San Antonio Express-News.

“This is human trafficking,” prosecutor Meredith Chacon told the jury. “He transported, coerced, threatened and made them feel they had no choice. This jury understood that.”

According to authorities, investigators seized more than 200 mini DVDs that contained hundreds of videos of Benavides and his former clients engaged in various sex acts in which he could be heard directing the women what to say and do.

“It's worth life, ladies and gentlemen,” Chacon said in her closing argument.

Benavides' lawyer, Monica Guerrero, said he will appeal the prison sentence. During the trial, Guerrero argued that the prosecutors did not apply the continuously trafficking of persons statute to Benavides' case. “He could not traffic to himself,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero notes that Benavides still has four additional felony charges pending against him and that prosecutors plan to try him on each of those cases individually.

On the opening day of Benavides' trial, a video was played that was so graphic, a juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom for a brief recess, according to a report. The video was played so that only the jury could see it. In the video, a woman could be heard crying, “Mark, you're hurting me.” The jurors looked so uncomfortable that Judge Dick Alcala sent them out for a break.

Benavides' assaults allegedly began in 2009, but police couldn't make an arrest because they couldn't corroborate the allegations against him, according to his November 2015 arrest warrant.

None of the victims knew each other, but they all said Benavides was their lawyer and that he made them have sex with him and video recorded the encounters. And all of them said Benavides has a distinctive tattoo of the scales of justice on his back, according to the warrant.