Mark Godsey, a lawyer who heads the Ohio Innocence Project and did some work on the Widmer case before the retrial was granted, said he thinks Widmer should never have been convicted in the first trial. Now, in the retrial, he says, the defense team has even more strongly pointed out the weaknesses in authorities' investigation.

"The state's case here is speculation and guesswork, and nothing more," he said. "And here, it's speculation and guesswork that the new trial team has shown is based on shoddy work, negligence, altered documents and jumping to conclusions."

Legal analysts and ordinary citizens - some of whom have been attending the Warren County trial despite no prior Widmer connection - concur that his defense team raised doubts during the trial's first two weeks. To convict, jurors must find Widmer guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," a term that will be defined in detailed legal instructions before jurors start deliberating.