Updated at 4:34 p.m. ET -- Capping a day of dramatic turnarounds, the jury in the campaign finance trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards found him not guilty on Thursday on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and said it was deadlocked on the remaining five charges.

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles then declared a mistrial on the remaining charges. It was not immediately clear if prosecutors intend to seek a retrial on those charges.

In a statement outside the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., Edwards acknowledged that he had behaved poorly, but said he had not acted illegally.

Read Thursday's court transcript

“I want to make sure that everyone hears from me … that while I don’t believe I did anything illegal,  I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong and there is no one else responsible for my sins,” said Edwards, who did not testify at the trial and took no questions.

The count on which the jury reached a "not guilty" verdict involved contributions from Edwards' contributor Rachel "Bunny" Mellon.

NBC station WNCN of Raleigh, N.C., reported that when the decision came, Edwards closed his eyes, rubbed his face and smiled at his daughter, Cate. He then hugged his daughter and his elderly parents while whispering to them, "I told you this would be OK," WCNC reported. Earlier, the jury of eight men and four women told Eagles that it had reached a verdict on all six felony accounts against Edwards. But after the jury returned to the courtroom, the foreperson stated that jurors had reached a unanimous decision on only one count. Eagles then sent them back to the jury room to resume deliberations.

The charges against Edwards, 58, arose while he was in the midst of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and were focused on about $1 million in donations 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.

Prosecutors argued that the money amounted to illegal and unreported campaign contributions at a time when federal donations were capped at $2,300; 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 have faced up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.  Each individual count carries a maximum sentence of 5 years and a fine of up to $250,000.

• Full trial coverage on msnbc.com
• Full transcripts of closing arguments
• Analysis by Hampton Dellinger

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

The jurors were charged with deciding if Edwards "knowingly and willfully" violated a 1971 campaign finance law by orchestrating the scheme to support and hide Hunter.

Slideshow: Edwards' public life

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Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has faced public and private challenges throughout his life and career.

Launch slideshow

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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Some experts called Friday’s guilty verdict against a former Rutgers student who spied on his gay roommate's romantic encounters “precedent setting” in the battle against bullying, but others decried it as entering the “realm of vengeance.”

Dharun Ravi, 20, was facing 15 counts, including bias intimidation -- the state's nomenclature for a hate crime -- and invasion of privacy. Fellow New Jersey residents found him guilty on most parts of the 15 counts. He faces as much as 10 years imprisonment at his sentencing in May.

Ravi’s roommate and fellow first-year student at Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, three days after Ravi watched Clementi kiss another man via a web camera and one day after Ravi tried to do it again, an event he invited fellow students to watch.

Prosecutors pursued New Jersey’s hate crimes’ statute in the case, which attracted national interest and triggered debate over such laws. The bias crime law, on the books since 2002, has seemingly never been applied in a case where the underlying charge is invasion of privacy – or such cases haven’t been publicized, experts said.

Former Rutgers student guilty in webcam spying case

“There’s no winner here,” said Bill Dobbs, a longtime gay activist and civil libertarian. “There’s a young gay man dead and another one whose life is wrecked to a considerable degree. This case had an overzealous prosecutor … who was pushed by gay organizations that have lost sight of justice.

“The suicide cast a long shadow into that court room and really got the book thrown at Dharun Ravi,” Dobbs added, noting he didn’t think there would have been a criminal case without Clementi’s death. “This is well beyond looking for justice and into the realm of vengeance considering the number of charges against Ravi and the seriousness of them. As hate crimes prosecution mount, the flaws of such laws become apparent.”

The jury had to find the India-born Ravi, who could face deportation after serving his sentence, guilty of invasion of privacy -- known as the underlying charge -- to then convict him of bias intimidation. The use of that charge was deemed atypical in such cases, with some law professors divided on its use.

Louis Raveson, a law professor of criminal and civil trial litigation at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, thought the prosecution made its case and that the bias intimidation charge was used appropriately. 

“There was a fair amount of evidence that Ravi did harbor a bias towards gay males and that he thought it was funny to expose Tyler because of his relationship with another man. … It may not have been overwhelming evidence but it was certainly sufficient for the jury to find that Ravi was guilty,” he said.

Groundwork for future cases
Raveson also thought the decision could lay the groundwork for similar cases nationally.

“It will be an important precedent throughout the country because it is recognizing the kind of bullying that’s gone on for decades and decades isn’t just boyish pranks but rather they’re serious crimes,” he said, adding: “Access to social media exacerbates the seriousness of invasion of privacy because instead of one person telling his friend about it, and it dying, instead it goes on the Internet where … potentially thousands of people can see it, and the kind of trauma that that can cause to a victim is enormous.”

Former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, now a partner at New Jersey law firm McCarter & English agreed that the case highlighted the role of modern communications in such cases. “This verdict should serve as a cautionary tale as to the serious consequences of reckless behavior in the age of technology,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Marc Poirer, an openly gay professor of law and sexuality at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey, said he was concerned about the verdict, saying it was not a typical bias crime.

“I think that the law didn’t fit very well,” he said, calling Ravi’s actions those of a “dumb 18-year-old” that “went wrong.”

“I think if Clementi had not committed suicide, none of this would have surfaced in this way,” he added. “I don’t want to say it’s a miscarriage of justice. I would say it’s a misapplication of principles that would be better served -- especially if we’re just figuring out how to do this -- with a clearer case.”

'Worries me'
Poirer also was concerned about part of the bias law that allows jurors to find guilt on victim intimidation without the perpetrator having intent to actually do that; instead, it’s based on the way the victim felt. The jurors did convict in this way, though they also did find Ravi guilty in some instances of “knowing” or acting with “the purpose to intimidate.” (Verdict breakdown: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/03/ravi_webcam_trial_verdict.html)

This “is subject to a very … widespread kind of application, so that worries me a good deal,” he added.

Meanwhile, a civil rights group, Garden State Equality, hailed the decision.

“This verdict sends the important message that a ‘kids will be kids’ defense is no excuse to bully another student,” chairman Steven Goldstein wrote in a statement posted to their website. (http://www.gardenstateequality.org/)

“Though Tyler Clementi has left us, the rest of Dharun Ravi’s life will help tell his life story. Ravi’s own lawyer basically portrayed him as a young man who engaged in jerky, insensitive behavior. Ravi can stay that course, or he can (do) some good with his life by making amends and fighting for the justice and dignity of every individual, including people who are LGBT. That much is up to Ravi.”

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A former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate's love life has been convicted of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in a case that exploded into the headlines when the victim of the snooping committed suicide.

Indian-born Dharun Ravi, 20, could face 10 years in prison when he's sentenced on May 21 and be deported after he's finished serving his time. He shook his head slightly after the guilty verdicts were read for most parts of the 15 counts, including bias intimidation, a hate crime, and invasion of privacy.

Ravi's former roommate, Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22, 2010, after finding out that Ravi saw him kissing another man and appeared to encourage others to watch through a camera on his computer.

The panel deliberated for 10 hours total on Wednesday and Thursday and began anew about 9 a.m. on Friday before announcing around 11 a.m. that it had a verdict.

Discuss this case on msnbc.com's US News Facebook page 

The seven women and five men on the jury, who appear to range in age from their 20s to 70s, were urged in summations by defense lawyer Steven Altman to dismiss Ravi's actions as those of a foolish child trying to impress others rather than a bully who harbored a prejudice against gays.

Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Julia McClure in her closing statement said Ravi's messages about Clementi on Twitter and other social media, including one inviting others to a "viewing party" through a webcam aimed at Clementi's bed after he asked for the room alone, showed his animosity toward his gay roommate.

Clementi checked Ravi's Twitter account 38 times in the two days before he killed himself, the prosecution told the jury.

Altman said Friday afternoon that he would prepare a press release on the case next week. "Right now I am just dealing with the emotions that everyone involved with the Ravi family and the defense experienced and continue to experience with the verdict," he said.

Rutgers webcam verdict debated, dissected online

At a courthouse news conference after the verdict, Clementi's father, Joe, addressed himself to college students and other young people, saying: "You're going to meet a lot of people in your life. Some of these people you may not like. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean you have to work against them."

In a statement issued after the verdict, Rutgers University said: "This sad incident should make us all pause to recognize the
importance of civility and mutual respect in the way we live, work and communicate with others."

The jury found Ravi not guilty on some subparts of some of the charges, but guilty of all 15 counts as a whole.

Reaction to Rutgers gay-spying case: From 'vengeance' to 'precedent-setting'

Before the trial, Ravi and his lawyers had rejected a plea bargain that would have spared him from prison. He would have
gotten probation and 600 hours of community service and would have been given help in avoiding deportation.

Reaction to the verdict in the legal and gay communities was mixed Friday.

“There’s no winner here,” said Bill Dobbs, a longtime gay activist and civil libertarian. “There’s a young gay man dead and another one whose life is wrecked to a considerable degree. This case had an overzealous prosecutor … who was pushed by gay organizations that have lost sight of justice."

Marc Poirer, an openly gay professor of law and sexuality at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey, said he was concerned about the verdict, saying it was not a typical bias crime.

“I think that the law didn’t fit very well,” he said, calling Ravi’s actions those of a “dumb 18-year-old” that “went wrong.”

“I think if Clementi had not committed suicide, none of this would have surfaced in this way,” he added. “I don’t want to say it’s a miscarriage of justice. I would say it’s a misapplication of principles that would be better served -- especially if we’re just figuring out how to do this -- with a clearer case.”

Msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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