PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Eight former boot camp employees were cleared of charges stemming from the death of a juvenile offender in their care.

A jury in Panama City, Fla., deliberated just 90 minutes Friday before reaching their verdict in the trial of seven drill instructors and a nurse accused of causing the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. (VIDEO)

Former drill instructors Henry Dickens, Patrick Garrett, Raymond Hauck, Charles Helms Jr., Henry McFadden Jr., Charles Enfinger, Joseph Walsh and nurse Kristin Schmidt could have faced up to 30 years in prison if they had been convicted of aggravated manslaughter of a person under 18.

The panel of four women and two men was also given the option of considering lesser charges of manslaughter, child neglect and misdemeanor culpable negligence — convictions that would have carried lighter sentences.

"We were innocent all along," said McFadden. "We knew this truth would come out."

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As Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet read the verdicts for each of the defendants, stifled sobs from the defendants' families grew louder in the courtroom.

On the other side of the packed courtroom gallery, Anderson's mother, Gina Jones, shook her head, and his father, Robert Anderson, sunk his head into his hands.

As the jury was being polled, Jones, who did not miss a day of testimony, angrily left the courtroom.

"I can't see my son no more and everybody else can see their family. It's wrong," Jones muttered as she stormed out.

Waylon Graham, the lawyer for Helms, called the case a "political prosecution" that should never have come to trial.

"The state's case was basically a sham," he said. "We sent them packing back to South Florida where they belong."

The controversy began more than a year ago, when authorities released surveillance camera footage capturing a physical altercation between Anderson and the guards that preceded his death. The incident sparked protests in the state capital and brought an end to the state-run boot camp programs.

At the heart of the case were two wildly differing opinions about the cause of death. In the first autopsy, Bay County Medical Examiner Charles Siebert concluded that Anderson died a natural death caused by complications from sickle-cell trait, a typically benign genetic disorder that affects the flow of oxygen in the blood.

When that opinion provoked a public outcry amid allegations of a cover-up, former Gov. Jeb Bush appointed a team of special prosecutors from Hillsborough County in Tampa to try the case. They requested a second autopsy, which found that the teen died of suffocation and ammonia inhalation due to the actions of the guards.

The jurors heard from both medical examiners, who described a climate of intense political pressure from the governor's office to "resolve" the case. Both pathologists insisted, however, that the pressure did not influence their findings.

On a local level, the case has polarized Panama City, a military town in the Florida panhandle whose residents consider it one of the last stops in the deep South before entering a region of the state populated by transplants and snowbirds.

Throughout the week-long trial, demonstrators have gathered outside the courthouse, chanting and carrying signs in support of both sides. After the verdict was read Friday, as the defendants and their lawyers spoke with the media, people drove by shouting "murderers," and "they know they're guilty."

The Anderson family's lawyer, Benjamin Crump, implied that race was the deciding issue in the case, in which a black teenager died after being manhandled by a group of guards that included whites, blacks and one Asian-American.

"You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little black boy and nothing happens," Crump said.