Casey Anthony juror Jennifer Ford said that she and the other jurors cried and were "sick to our stomachs" after voting to acquit Casey Anthony of charges that she killed her 2-year-old daughter Caylee.
"I did not say she was innocent," said Ford, who had previously only been identified as juror No. 3. "I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."
Ford, a 32-year-old nursing student at St. Petersburg College, praised the jurors, but said when deliberations began there were "a lot of conflicting ideas." At first, people came down on both sides of whether Casey Anthony killed her daughter, Ford said, and the first vote was 10-2 for "not guilty."
"I toggled on manslaughter and not guilty," Ford told "Nightline" anchor Terry Moran in an exclusive TV interview. "It doesn't feel good. It was a horrible decision to have to make."
The jury's jaw-dropping not guilty verdict shocked court observers, but it was also a difficult moment for the panel, Ford said in her exclusive interviews with ABC News. No one from the jury was willing to come out and talk to the media in the hours after the verdict.
"Everyone wonders why we didn't speak to the media right away," Ford said. "It was because we were sick to our stomach to get that verdict. We were crying, and not just the women. It was emotional and we weren't ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial."
Ford told Moran she thought Casey Anthony's claim that her 2-year-old daughter accidentally drowned and she lied for three years was more believable than the evidence the prosecution presented.
"I'm not saying I believe the defense," she said. "Obviously, it wasn't proven so I'm not taking that and speculating at all. But it's easier for me logically to get from point A to point B" via the defense argument.
Ford said that she couldn't make out "logically" the prosecution's argument because there were too many unanswered questions about how Caylee died, including how Casey Anthony would have used chloroform to smother her 2-year-old daughter, then put her in the trunk of her car without anyone seeing her.
"If there was a dead child in that trunk, does that prove how she died? No idea, still no idea." Ford told Moran. "If you're going to charge someone with murder, don't you have to know how they killed someone or why they might have killed someone, or have something where, when, why, how? Those are important questions. They were not answered."
Instead of murder, Casey Anthony, 25, was found guilty of four counts of lying to law enforcement and could be released from jail as early as Thursday. Ford agreed that Anthony was a "pathological liar" but said "bad behavior is not enough to prove a crime" and her actions could be blamed on her family dynamic.
Courtesy Jennifer Ford
Jennifer Ford is a 32 year old nursing... View Full Size
Top 9 Moments: Casey Anthony TrialWatch Video
Casey Anthony: Alternate Juror Calls Her 'Good Mother' Watch Video
Casey Anthony: Was There Reasonable Doubt? Watch Video
"The family she comes from and the family that made her what she is had some influence," she said. "What do they say? You're as sick as your secrets? I mean, the family seemed to have a little something going on."
She added that she thought Casey Anthony's father, George Anthony, was "dishonest."
"I don't know if he had anything to do with it, but I think that he was there," she said. "He and Casey have something."
Casey Anthony Prosecutor: 'All Came Down to Cause of Death'
Earlier today, the prosecutor and an alternate juror agreed on why the jury refused to convict Anthony: They couldn't prove how Caylee Anthony died.
"It all came down to the evidence," said Florida state attorney Jeff Ashton on "The View." "I think ultimately it all came down to -- at least from what the one alternate said -- it came down to the cause of death."
Russell Huekler, one of five alternate jurors who were present for all the testimony and sequestered along with the 12 other jurors, said today that he would have delivered the same verdict and that he was shocked by the public outrage over the trial's outcome.
"The prosecution failed to prove their case and there was reasonable doubt," Huekler said. "Again, they didn't show us how Caylee died. They didn't show us a motive. I'm sorry people feel that way. ... These were 17 total jurors. They really listened to this case and kept an open mind."
