Deliberations

ORLANDO - Jurors deliberated for six hours Monday in the Casey Anthony murder trial after hearing prosecutors argue that the single mother killed her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, because the toddler interrupted her carefree partying and love life. Prosecutors in their rebuttal closing argument said the defense's assertion that Caylee's death was an accident made no sense. Anthony's attorneys said the girl drowned in the family's pool. They said that Anthony panicked and that her father, a former police officer, decided to make the death look like a homicide by placing duct tape over the child's mouth and dumping the body in nearby woods.

A Dauphin County Court jury deliberated about 4 1/2 hours yesterday without deciding whether former Upper Merion High School principal Jay C. Smith was guilty of murdering teacher Susan Reinert and her two children. The jury got the case at 5:10 p.m. after closing speeches in which Smith was described by the prosecution as a calculating killer and by the defense as an innocent man set up to take the blame for the June 1979 slayings. The 12 jurors were sent to a local hotel about 9:45 p.m. and will resume deliberations this morning.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - After hearing competing portraits of Jerry Sandusky as mentor and monster, a Centre County jury spent more than seven hours deliberating his fate before breaking for the night Thursday. Jurors suspended their work around 8:30 p.m. after requesting the testimony of former Pennsylvania State University assistant coach Mike McQueary and that of McQueary family friend John Dranov, who had been called as a defense witness. Judge John Cleland, noting the testimony was lengthy, suggested the jury consider it in the morning.

Jurors at the federal racketeering trial of Philadelphia's reputed mob leaders ended their 15th day of talks without a verdict - amid fears that a 16th day might not be enough. As the day closed Wednesday, jurors asked to again review evidence related to video-poker games seized in the long-running FBI investigation. It was a request identical to one that came from the jury room when deliberations started on Jan. 8, leading to buzz that the eight men and four women might literally be talking in circles.

A juror in the Bonusgate corruption trial of former State Rep. Mike Veon and three codefendants was excused because of illness yesterday and replaced by an alternate, further complicating an already strained and long deliberation process. After six days of deliberations, Dauphin County Court Judge Richard A. Lewis told the jury that it must "start anew. " "You must set aside and disregard any earlier deliberations just as if they never occurred," Lewis said. The departing juror - No. 10, an insurance claims representative - had tearfully addressed Lewis earlier in the week.

After four hours of deliberations, a Superior Court jury failed to reach a verdict yesterday in the murder trial of former West Chester businessman Vincent L. Perry Sr. Deliberations are expected to continue today. Perry, 51, convicted of selling thousands of pounds of rancid meat to schools and other institutions three years ago, is charged with capital murder in the 1983 death of a federal drug informant. Charles Kevin Kelly, 35, of Boothwyn, a former motorcycle-club leader whom prosecutors have identified as Perry's enforcer, is also charged in the case.

Jury deliberations continued today in the murder trial of Eddie Polec's accused killers. Jurors must decide if they will send the six youths to jail for life. Dawan Alexander, 18; Thomas Crook, 19; Bou Khathavong, 18; Carlo Johnson, 20; Nick Pinero, 18, and Anthony Rienzi, 18, are charged with first-degree murder in Polec's baseball-bat beating death in front of St. Cecilia's Church in Fox Chase on Nov. 11, 1994. Alexander, Johnson and Pinero are also charged with aggravated assault in the beating of two other teens.

Despite twice declaring an impasse, jurors were to continue deliberating today in the case of David C. Barnes, a former Willingboro police officer accused of sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls. Yesterday, an hour and a half after returning from the holiday weekend, jurors sent Superior Court Judge Victor P. Friedman a note saying that "no further deliberations will help. " But after Friedman asked whether a decision was possible, jurors decided to review evidence - specifically a two-hour interrogation of Barnes by two Willingboro police officers taped when the case began in January 1997.