NEW YORK (Court TV) — With numerous protesters blasting their verdict over the weekend, jurors in the Amadou Diallo trial say that, based on the evidence and their instructions, they had no choice but to acquit the four NYPD officers who killed the West African street vendor.

"Race was not a factor," said Charise Smith, one of the four African-Americans on the 12-panel jury. "Based on the case before us and the instructions given to us, we had to choice. We were told to see the shooting from the officers' point of view, not Mr. Diallo's. The judge said the to the jury they should put themselves in the shoes of the officers."

Smith was one of the seven jurors interviewed Monday on NBC's "Today." Last Friday, the Albany jury acquitted officers Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy of all charges in Diallo's shooting death. Diallo was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets in the vestibule of his Bronx home last February. The officers said they thought the victim was armed and aiming a gun at them when they opened fire. But, to the officers' horror, Diallo was unarmed, having only a wallet, a beeper and his keys when he was struck 19 times.

Despite telling the presiding judge, Albany Justice Joseph Teresi, that they did not want any contact with the media after the verdict, several of the jurors granted interviews with the local New York tabloids and The Associated Press; seven of them sat down for an interview with "Today." In the "Today" interview, the jurors said that they were "troubled" by the description of Diallo's actions just before the shooting and believed the officers had no choice but to think that Diallo was about to shoot them. Another juror, a white male, told "Today" that he agreed that police officers have a right to use deadly physical force when they believe their lives are in danger.

Jurors had to decide whether the officers were justified in their decision to shoot Diallo. They had to decide what, if anything, Diallo did to make the defendants believe that he was about to fire a weapon at them or flee during a possible robbery attempt. Carroll and McMellon testified that their encounter with Diallo escalated after they identified themselves and the victim refused to heed their command to halt. At the time, the four members of New York's Street Crime Unit were driving an unmarked police car looking for a Bronx serial rapist. As they drove down Wheeler Avenue, Carroll said he thought Diallo was acting suspiciously because he kept looking up and down the block, and repeatedly ducked his head in and out of the vestibule, as if he didn't want to be seen. At that point, Carroll and McMellon decided to approach Diallo.

But, Carroll and McMellon said, when Diallo did not acknowledge them and "darted" into the vestibule, they thought he was trying to flee them. Both officers said they began to run after him. [Carroll said he thought Diallo may have been a lookout for a push-in robbery.] When Diallo began to turn towards the officers and reach for a black object in his right pocket, Carroll said he believed Diallo had a weapon. Carroll said he cried, "Gun!" Gunfire erupted.

McMellon, the defense says, fell off the steps and Boss and Murphy thought he had been hit. When they started shooting, Boss and Murphy told jurors, they believed they were coming to the aid of fellow officers who were under fire.

Juror Ed Powell said the jury believed that the officers thought that their lives were in danger. "If I were to pull something out of my pocket, you couldn't identify that quickly whether it was a gun or a wallet," he said on "Today."