OTTUMWA - Jurors have found Sheri Locke not guilty of all charges. They deliberated just over one day before announcing the verdict Friday morning.

Locke, 51, shot Charles Denham at her home in August 2007. Prosecutors said she ambushed him and planned the killing. The defense said Locke shot him after he arrived in her home unannounced.

Jurors didn't speak to media after rendering the verdict, so it's not clear whether they believed every defense claim. But they decided Locke's actions did not rise to the level of first degree murder or any of the lesser included charges they could have convicted on.

Locke said she didn't have a strong feeling either way about how the jury would decide.

"I knew as I told my story they either believed me or they didn't," she said. "I'm so happy to be able to go back to my family. I've missed them so much."

Wapello County Attorney Allen Cook was clearly frustrated by the result.

"I was surprised. I certainly felt strongly about this case. We did everything we could with the evidence we had," he said. "I don't know what more we could have done."

Members of the Denham family were stunned. Charles Denham Jr., said the jurors didn't hear the whole story behind Locke's relationship with his father.

"They couldn't talk about her past," he said. "She tried to kill him two weeks before [the shooting]."

Denham said Locke and his father were out on a lake in that incident. His father never learned to swim, but he said Locke cut the inflatable inner tube he was on when the couple was about 150 yards from shore.

Even defense attorney Eric Parrish was a bit surprised by the verdict. He said he believed in the case, but that there were "attitudes out there that we were fighting against." Parrish thought jurors might have a hard time believing that a woman in an abusive relationship could ever be justified in shooting someone.

"That was my concern. From the start this was a difficult case," he said.

10:30 a.m.

Jurors have found Sheri Locke not guilty of all charges. They deliberated just over one day before announcing the verdict Friday morning.