By Marc Klaas

And so, the waiting begins. The stakes are momentous for those intimately involved as the jury pores over the evidence, the Judge's instructions, their own instincts and attempt to render justice.

Having exercised his constitutional rights and received his day in court the killer sits in his cell awaiting his fate. Does he spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars as a child killer or a child molester? The difference is significant, because the prisoner's code of honor dictates his admission into the fraternity of inmates or outcasts. Does he waste away in old age or face lethal injection sometime in the distant future? In either case the light of day is one supervised hour in the yard daily throughout his eternity. Regardless of the outcome, he will never have another opportunity to victimize an innocent.

The lawyers huddle with their teams, pondering their presentations. "Should we have put a greater emphasis on this bit of evidence? Should we have introduced more theatrics? Did the other side overwhelm us with reason and evidence?" The jury decides who will win the prize. A career case dissected and analyzed to the point of minutiae over the course of thirty months. A case based on the foundation of sexual intent, meticulously prepared by a prosecution team overwhelmed by the murder of a little girl. The defense, pursuing vindication for defending the indefensible, seeking an opportunity to hold their heads up high and say "I told you so."

For the chroniclers of history it is another day in the life. The media patiently waits for the verdict as they have done so many times previously. An opportunity to capture the inevitable sound bites, observe action and reaction and regurgitate events into digestible thirty or sixty second packages. They observe, ready to vault the verdict into a one day headline, unless a catastrophe or a head of state eating a bullet bumps it below the fold. However, they are also our friends, and in many cases our confidants. For many, they too are committed to justice in this case, as they have been working it from the beginning.

For Polly's family there is no prize. Only continued sorrow at the realization that the verdict will not alter our reality. We spent the day nervously second guessing an intelligent panel wrestling with a monumental responsibility. If it is all so obvious, why are they taking so long? We sit on pins, walk on needles and attempt to divert ourselves from the intimate details of a case that we seem to have been living forever. My stomach growls and I think that it is my pager, vibrating with the secret code that will deliver us back into the courtroom for final justice.