Yup. Jury nullification. This verdict was a “ mom’s just wanna have fun” decision.
I know in my gut that she’s guilty but its a bad side effect of the best possible option. In at least one case a jury found Jack Kevorkian innocent despite the fact that he readily admitted guilt.
During the civil rights era, juries were refusing to convict obviously guilty men. In all their wisdom the feds used those as a means of convincing Americans to allow them to create a new class of crime and retry those men in federal courts in venues where convictions were likely.
Here we are 50 years later with a growing list of hate crime laws.
The Defense called her a slut, the Prosecution said she wanted to party, which was what people her age did, yet the alternate juror who spoke completely confused the two and said he was young and liked to party and there was nothing wrong with that. What a moron.