Verdict to be announced in John Edwards trial

Chuck Burton / AP

John Edwards leaves the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., on Thursday.

By NBC News' Michael Austin and Stacey Klein and msnbc.com's Mike Brunker

A jury on Thursday reached a verdict on one count in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards, but was ordered by the judge to resume deliberations.??

In a confusing turn of events, the jury of eight men and four women told U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles?on Thursday afternoon that it had reached a verdict. But when?jurors indicated they had reached a unanimous verdict on only one of the?six felony counts against Edwards, Eagles sent them back to the jury room.

The count on which the jury?reached a?verdict involved contributions from?Edwards' contributor Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. The jurors did not indicate what the verdict was.

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After deliberations resumed, a court spokesman told members of the media outside the court that no announcement was imminent.?"It's going to be a while," he said. "Stand down. Just relax."?

The charges against Edwards, 58,?arose from about $1 million in donations while he was in the midst of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination from?two wealthy donors, Fred Baron and?Mellon, a billionnaire banking heiress. The money?was used to support and?hide Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, from the media.

Prosecutors argued that the donations amounted to violations of federal campaign finance laws; the defense said?the money was a "gift" intended to allow Edwards to hide the affair from his ailing wife, Elizabeth, and the public. Elizabeth Edwards, who had previously been diagnosed with breast cancer, separated from John Edwards in early 2010 and died later that year.

If found guilty of all six counts, Edwards could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.? Each individual count carries a maximum sentence of 5 years and up to $250,000.

Attorneys for Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee,?and prosecutors alike painted Edwards as a liar and a bad husband. Where they differed was?whether the scheme to hide his affair amounted to a crime.

The jurors ? eight men and four women, six of them white, five African-American and one Hispanic ? must?decide whether Edwards "knowingly and willfully" violated a 1971 campaign finance law by orchestrating the scheme to support and hide Hunter.

Prosecutors alleged in their closing arguments that Edwards manipulated the campaign finance system to conceal the affair with Hunter, a videographer on his 2008 presidential campaign staff.

He "clearly knew the law and decided to violate it in order to salvage his campaign," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon said, accusing Edwards of cynically seeking to "keep her quiet" until the election was over "and his wife (had) passed away."

Lead defense attorney Abbe Lowell admitted in his closing arguments that Edwards had committed many "moral wrongs," but he insisted that none of the misdeeds was "a legal one."

"John's conduct is shameful, but it's human," Lowell told the jury.

Letters and other notes from?Mellon appeared to be crucial to the jurors' deliberations ? from their first day of discussions, they requested a stream of exhibits related to the nearly $750,000 she contributed.

Mellon, who is 101 years old, didn't testify during the trial, but her attorney and financial adviser, Alex Forger, offered extensive testimony that Mellon knew that her donations were intended to fund the "Hunter problem" and weren't given as campaign contributions.

A possible turning point came in mid-May, when Judge Eagles barred most of the defense's planned testimony from current and former members of the Federal Election Commission about a federal audit that concluded that the money didn't amount to campaign contributions subject to federal regulation.

Eagles ruled that evidence about the FEC audit was inadmissible because it couldn't be determined exactly what the commission knew or was told at the time.

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