GREENSBORO, N.C. — Jurors in John Edwards campaign corruption trial said Friday they were deadlocked on most charges because the former presidential contender never actually received any money from two wealthy donors to hide his pregnant mistress, and they didn't believe the star witness' account of the cover-up.

On network talk shows, even jurors who thought Edwards was guilty on at least some of the six counts of campaign finance fraud said the prosecution simply didn't have enough evidence. The jurors did not say what the split was, in terms of guilty votes.

"We tried to put our feelings aside and what we were doing was just looking at the facts to come up with a verdict," juror Cindy Aquaro said on NBC's "Today" show.

Juror Jonathan Nunn said he thought the money from the two wealthy donors were personal gifts, not campaign donations.

The jurors acquitted Edwards on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on the other five.

"Everybody's got their own beliefs based off of what they saw," Nunn told ABC's "Good Morning America." "They stood their ground. They stood by their decision and I respect that."

Trial observers said the jury's decision bore out criticism from the earliest stages of the case that it was a reach, that prosecutors went after the ex-U.S. senator without the kind of evidence that justified the charges that he masterminded a scheme to use campaign donations to hide his pregnant mistress from the public and his terminally ill wife.

"As noted by nearly every campaign finance lawyer who considered the matter, this was a lousy case," said Melanie Sloan, executive director for the campaign finance watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "All the salacious details prosecutors offered up to prove that Edwards is, indeed, despicable, were not enough to persuade the jury to convict him."

Edwards faced six felony charges involving nearly $1 million provided by two wealthy political donors that was used to help hide the Democrat's mistress, Rielle Hunter, as he sought the White House in 2008. He faced a maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

To convict Edwards, prosecutors needed to show not only that the candidate knew about the secret payments, which he denied, but that he knew he was violating federal law by accepting them. But the government was unable to produce any witness who said Edwards knowingly violated the law. Even former Edwards aide Andrew Young testified that Edwards told him he had consulted campaign finance lawyers who assured him the money was legal.

A former trial lawyer, Edwards was so unimpressed with the testimony against him that when the government rested, he turned to a member of his defense team and asked dismissively, "That's their case?"

When it was their turn, his lawyers presented just two days of evidence. Edwards elected not to take the stand in his own defense.

"This is a case that should define the difference between a wrong and a crime ... between a sin and a felony," Edwards' lead attorney Abbe Lowell told the jury during closing arguments. "John Edwards has confessed his sins. He will serve a life sentence for those."

Presented with no damning evidence and no obvious victim beyond the public's trust, jurors couldn't see their way to convicting the charismatic ex-candidate. Prosecutors are unlikely to retry the case, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the decision will undergo review in the coming days.

Kieran Shanahan, a former federal prosecutor and Raleigh defense attorney who attended the trial, said he thought the prosecutors took their best shot with what was ultimately a very weak case.

"They got their best witnesses, their best evidence and the judge ruled in their favor on all major evidentiary issues," Shanahan said. "In the end, the jury just didn't believe them."

Steve Friedland, another former federal prosecutor who watched the case from inside the courtroom, said the jury's verdict was not surprising, considering the government had no smoking gun to prove Edwards guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But, he predicted, Edwards won't fare as well in the court of public opinion.

"Regardless of the decision, he still is Exhibit A for how we do not want our leaders to behave," said Friedland, now a professor at Elon University School of Law. "This is a huge victory for him, and big burden off his shoulders, but a hollow one given his astounding fall from grace."

From the start, lawyers for Edwards painted the prosecution as politically motivated. The investigation was originally spearheaded by George Holding, the then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Appointed by President George W. Bush, Holding made a name for himself with criminal probes of high profile Democrats, including the state's former governor. When President Barack Obama came into office, Holding managed to forestall being replaced by a Democrat for years while the Edwards investigation was ongoing. He eventually resigned in 2011 as Edwards was indicted and soon announced his candidacy for Congress, winning in the GOP primary last month.

The final decision to prosecute Edwards was made by the Obama administration and the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section. Once highly admired, the section's reputation suffered after a corruption conviction against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was overturned in 2009 after it was found prosecutors knowingly concealed exculpatory evidence and allowed false testimony to be presented at trial.

The case against Edwards was tried by three prosecutors sent down from Washington and one prosecutor from Raleigh who had served as Holding's second-in-command. They presented 14 days of testimony and evidence, with Young their star witness.

An aide once so loyal he falsely claimed paternity of Edwards' baby and helped hide his mistress from the media for nearly a year, Young turned against his former boss and testified for the prosecution under an immunity agreement. Though the government's case recounted how Edwards repeatedly lied about his affair to both the American people and his cancer-stricken wife, the defense countered by shredding Young's credibility on the witness stand and using financial records to show the former aide and his wife kept most of the money at issue in the case, funneling it into the construction of the couple's $1.6 million dream home.

Before Edwards' prosecution, no federal candidate had been tried over payments from a third party that flowed to a mistress. Sloan said the lack of resolution in the case will likely leave candidates and regulators confused about what is and is not a legitimate campaign expense.

"The U.S. criminal justice system requires fair notice of what is and is not against the law," Sloan said. "Sadly, the Justice Department seems to have forgotten this fundamental American precept. Luckily, the jury remembered."

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Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report from Washington.

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Follow AP writer Michael Biesecker at http://www.twitter.com/mbieseck

Here is a recap of Rielle Hunter's relationship with Edwards.
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  • Love At First Sight?

    "And when they left, my friend went over and asked Tony if that was John Edwards, and he said yes. And my friend turned to me and said, 'See, I told you it was John Edwards.' And then I came over to the table, and I said, 'I can't believe that was John Edwards; he's so hot. He's really got it going on. He's got something unusual about him, and I never would have recognized him.' And Tony said, 'Oh, my God, you should have come over and told him that. He would have loved to have heard that.'"

  • An Extraordinary Night

    "We had an extraordinary night, and I did know that this was unlike anything either of us had ever experienced. And as we have all learned, that was accurate! [laughs] He in fact did say to me the first night, 'Falling in love with you could really [screw] up my plans for becoming President.' And of course I said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.'"

  • The Oddest Connection He Had Ever Felt

    "Well, what Johnny later told me was, he went to dinner and could not stop thinking about me, like, 'Who was that woman, and why didn't I go over and talk to her?' ... So when he walked around the corner and saw me standing there, he lit up like a Christmas tree. And I thought his reaction when he saw me was just so cute. I mean, he looked like a little kid at Christmas. And I just uttered to him, 'You're so hot.' And he said, 'Why, thank you!' And he almost jumped into my arms. Literally. And um, that's how we met. On the corner of 61st and Park Avenue."

  • 'I Had To Sleep With Him'

    "I used to make a joke that I could have helped save the world, but I had to sleep with him. You know? It was kind of like that."

  • Falling In Love

    "I fell in love with Johnny ... He called me the next day. We talked on the phone almost every night for four hours. We met on February 21. On February 25—on the phone, from Davenport, Iowa—I fell in love with him. Head over heels in love. I was a goner."

  • Here's ... Johnny!

    "Isn't that funny? You know, when I first met him, the first week of our relationship, I said to him, 'For some reason I cannot call you John, it doesn't come out. Could I call you Johnny?' And he said, 'That's my name.' And I didn't know that, but that's his actual birth name."

  • Knight In Shining Armor?

    "I had this thing in my head like a lot of women, where you want your man to stand up on a cliff and scream, 'I LOVE HER.' You know, the knight in shining armor. And that wasn't what was going on."

  • On Her Relationship Status

    "I am not engaged."

  • Why She's Talking Now

    "I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn't feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoken, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him. Also, it is not my desire to teach my daughter that when Mommy's upset with Daddy, you take matters into your own hands and fix Daddy's mistakes. Which I view as one of the biggest problems in all female-and-male relationships."

  • Not A Gold Digger

    "I mean, just for starters, I never 'hit on' Johnny. I'm not a predator, I'm not a gold digger, I'm not the stalker. I didn't have any power in that way in our relationship. He held all the power."

  • 'The Wrath Of Elizabeth Is A Mighty Wrath'

    "And I believe what happened in his marriage is, he could not go to his wife and say, 'We have an issue.' Because he would be pummeled. So he had a huge fear. Most of his mistakes or errors in judgment were because of his fear of the wrath of Elizabeth. He's allowed himself to be pushed into a lot of things that he wouldn't normally do because of Elizabeth's story line. And the spin that she wants to put out there. He was emasculated. And you know, the wrath of Elizabeth is a mighty wrath."

  • 'I Was A Bit Promiscuous'

    "I was never, as it's been reported, a drug addict. The word addiction means inability to stop. I stopped doing drugs in my twenties. As for being promiscuous, I would say that I was a bit promiscuous for about six months. But it was because I was partying, and there were a lot of very good-looking available 20-year-old men around that you'd be partying with, and there was a lot of, you know, hooking up going on."

  • A Toxic Relationship

    "[Elizabeth] was in denial about a lot of facts. And I say she was in denial because, you know, their relationship has been dysfunctional and toxic and awful for many, many years. And she was aware of, um, problems and chose to ignore them."

  • 'I Don't Really Believe He Was A Politician'

    "Well, I don't really believe he was a politician. I believe his ego and ambition drove him to that field. I believe he's more aligned with being a humanitarian. That suits his true nature. Just like I wasn't a mistress. You know, I'm not a mistress, but I played the role? I believe he played the role of a politician. It's not who he is. Being a politician was a path of transformation for him, I believe. It's not really what he was put on the planet to do."

  • Not A 'Home Wrecker'

    "And, well, first of all, infidelity doesn't happen in healthy marriages. The break in the marriage happens before the infidelity. And that break happened, you know, two and a half decades before I got there. So the home was wrecked already. I was not the Home Wrecker."

  • Naming Frances Quinn Hunter

    "Her name is Frances Quinn Hunter, and I love the name Frances. Johnny wasn't over the moon about Frances. So I was coming up with names, and Quinn is a name that I loved, and that was the only name that he thought was cool. And so I named her Quinn because Daddy really liked it."

  • Was Andrew Young In Love With Edwards?

    "Andrew [Young] was in love with Johnny...In love with him. Beyond. And I believe he loved Johnny more than he loved Cheri. So Johnny was the third person in their relationship. And I'm sure she hates Johnny, because Andrew took a lot of obvious actions that were for Johnny and not for Cheri. But Cheri went along with them. And they both have a way of spinning things. But a lot of their motivation is money."