"God loves me," Jessica Williams told her lawyer, John Watkins, after hearing a jury convict her only of driving with drugs in her system for a highway crash that left six teens dead.

The verdict left both sides praising the jury's decision. Prosecutors won six convictions — one for each victim — for the top charge of a 20-count indictment.

The defense was happy that the jury found the 21-year-old not guilty of driving while impaired, convicting her of driving with a prohibited substance in her blood based on a controversial state law they are confident will be overturned on appeal.

The jury that convicted the 21-year-old of the felony that could put Williams behind bars for 120 years rejected prosecutors' claims that the marijuana and Ecstasy she had taken impaired her at the time of the March 19 accident.

Williams, a former stripper with a genius-level IQ, was acquitted of lesser included charges of reckless driving and manslaughter, six counts of each, and convicted of use and possession of a controlled substance.

The verdict may help bolster a bid for leniency when Judge Mark Gibbons sentences Williams on March 30. Williams faces a minimum of two years to a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the six counts, and it's Gibbons decision whether to hand down consecutive or concurrent terms.

The panel of seven men and five women took about 14 hours over two days to convict Williams for the March 19, 2000, crash that left six juvenile offenders picking up trash alongside a busy Las Vegas highway dead.

Scott Garner and Anthony Smith, both 14; Rebeccah Glicken and Maleyna Stoltzfus, both 15; and Alberto Puig and Jennifer Booth, both 16, died as a result of the wreck.

The victims: (top) Booth, Garner, Glicken; (bottom) Smith, Stoltzfus, Puig

Williams, a daily marijuana user, admitted smoking the drug two hours before getting behind the wheel of a white Ford minivan and veering off Interstate 15 into the group of youths. A drug test later showed that she had also used Ecstasy eight to 10 hours before the 1:40 p.m. crash.

The prosecution had set out to prove that Williams was guilty of the top count on two legal premises: that she was under the influence of drugs and that the amount of marijuana in her blood showed she surpassed the standard for legal impairment.

"We thought we proved both charges," prosecutor Bruce Nelson said outside the courthouse. "As a practical matter, the punishment is the same — she's facing 120 years in prison."

Lead prosecutor Gary Booker was not in court Friday due to knee surgery.

The crime scene

"This lady chose to use drugs and drive. She killed six children and now it's time for her to pay for her crimes," Nelson said during the press conference.

"You cannot use drugs and drive. I think that's the message the jury sent today," he said.

But defense lawyer John Watkins said he was "elated" at the jury's decision — and so was his client.

"Jessica actually smiled and she said, 'God loves me, and thank you very much, Mr. Watkins,'" he said.

Watkins expressed confidence that he'll win on appeal, which he plans on filing next week. The appeal will seek to have the law that led to Williams' conviction overturned.

The statute sets a standard of impairment for drug use. Under the law, anyone with two nanograms or more of marijuana in his or her system is automatically considered legally impaired.

Williams hears the verdict

The law has generated controversy from medical and legal experts, who say that the amount is very low. Watkins contended that those who use marijuana on a daily basis, as his client admitted to having done, would need to be more than an occasional user to become impaired.

"I'm going to get that prohibitive substance charge knocked out," Watkins boasted to reporters after the verdict. "That law is unconstitutional ... It will not withstand constitutional muster."

Prosecutors said they were not concerned about a possible appeal, citing other states that have upheld similar laws.

But Watkins noted that other states, such as Georgia, have overturned such laws because of constitutional issues.

He also said that Williams' case has another basis for appeal: blood evidence he says the prosecution contaminated.

While prosecution drugs tests showed Williams was nearly three times over the legal standard, defense-ordered tests produced vastly different results, pinning Williams below the legal limit.

But while prosecutors accused the defense of purposely waiting more than 10 months to allow the marijuana content in the blood to dissipate before doing its tests, the defense learned that the blood was stored at room temperature rather than being refrigerated. Drug content in the blood is stable over time when the blood is refrigerated, but deteriorates when stored at a room temperature.

That revelation, which surfaced during the two-week trial, sent Watkins into a tirade, during which he accused prosecutors of denying Williams due process.

After the verdict, Watkins again accused prosecutors of placing the blood "on a shelf" so that Williams could not challenge their results.

Watkins argued during the trial that, although Williams does not deny using the drugs, neither marijuana nor Ecstasy played a role in the crash. Watkins called medical experts to say that the amount of drugs in her bloodstream wasn't enough to make Williams impaired.

The defense also called medical personnel who treated Williams following the crash to testify that she showed no signs of impairment. Prosecutors did little to contest those assessments, declining even to cross-examine the nurses who testified.

The defense claimed that Williams fell asleep and even called a sleep expert to the stand who said she has a sleeping disorder.

Although the defense apparently convinced the jury that Williams was not impaired when the accident occurred, parents of the victims and defendant alike seemed satisfied with the verdict.

"I'm very glad of the verdict," said Vicky Gould, mother of Scott Garner Jr. "That's what we were looking for."

Brigitte Smith, mother of victim Anthony Smith, feels Williams deserves to be held responsible for the crash. "She did what she did on her own. She made those decisions to smoke marijuana and take Ecstasy," she said.

Smith also took exception to a comment Watkins made outside the courthouse.

The defense lawyer said that, had the children been alive, they would blame the county that supervised the trash pick-up program, not Williams.

"My son would not come down here and say, 'Let her out of jail. No way. No way," said Smith, who after a pretrial proceeding got into a verbal tangle with relatives of Williams.

All six victims' families have filed a civil suit against Williams, Clark County and the company that financed the trash pick-up program.

Williams' father, Steve Williams, said he and his family will do whatever they can to help their efforts.

"In order to come up with an effective defense for my daughter, we had to do a lot of investigation," he said. Though his daughter was named as a defendant, she is willing to turn over all the documentation from the investigation to help bolster the families' claim.

"It will save them a lot of time and a lot of money I hope," he said. "I'd like to help them if I can. I don't know of another way or a better way I could help them."