"On Thursday the panel reached verdicts on Jaray Christy, 26, and on Tuesday returned their votes on co-defendant Jerron Henderson, 21, both charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Marshawn Burns, 29, of Moreno Valley.

   Jurors acquitted both men in the death of Burns, and also found them not guilty on counts of robbery and attempted robbery unrelated to the liquor store holdup.

  They also found not true the enhancement allegations of gang activity in a violent felony.

. . .

   The second key moment came when a prosecution witness, whom [co-defendant's attorney Darryl] Exum said was a gang member, was identified by a woman under examination by Christy's defense attorney Steele as the man who had robbed her--for a charge in which Christy had been named.

  It was one of the robbery charges separate from the Alessandro Liquor holdup.

  'That kind of lost the case for the prosecution as a whole,' Exum said."

. . .

  'We ate up two months of a civil courtroom, where regular people from Riverside should have been having their injuries resolved and their contracts disputes resolved,' Steele said.

  He estimated his client originally faced 71 years to life, and now faces perhaps a possible maximum of six years, four months."