If they were 6 to 6, I can’t see how they met for such a short time. Good lord, they were dealing with the death of a child at the hands of her mother, 10 total hours is simply a derelict of duty.
I can’t figure out how Ashton was so bad in hindsight when most every peer felt the prosecution was doing a compelling job with what they had to work with. IMO, they did over-charge, which was a big error, but not uncommon, but the other charges were there, too.
They had someone on the jury that was guiding them toward this verdict. There was someone who was guiding the thinking on meeting the highest level of proof for each count, without any reasonable doubt, starting with the first degree murder. He told them that if the prosecution could not even tell you how the child died, you could not be sure it was, indeed, murder. Then, he went on to manslaughter- same thing, didn’t know if it was murder or an accident, or even who did it- could have been George.
On down the line, convincing the jury that there was reasonable doubt for each charge. Once they bought into it for the first degree murder, it was easy to convince the same people for the rest of the charges. The fact that first degree murder in Florida could easily result in the death penalty made it easier to convince the jury that they needed absolute proof, without any doubt, of the circumstances surrounding the death.
I think that the verdict should have been 2nd degree, manslaughter, but if they voted for manslaughter, they had to vote for child abuse, which was really a no brainer, and that would have elevated the charge back to 1st degree. So, they voted to acquit on all charges.
The jurors thought that they were doing their job, but what they were really doing was abdicating. They basically said that we can’t make up our minds, so we are going to acquit.
It should have been a hung jury.