Hung jury in trial of Alaska teen accused in her mother's murder

JUNEAU — A judge declared a mistrial today after jurors said they couldn't reach a verdict in the case of a Southeast Alaska teenager accused of plotting with two former boyfriends to murder her mother.

Jury deliberations were about 90 minutes into the fifth day when jurors sent a note to Superior Court Judge Patricia Collins saying they couldn't reach a unanimous decision on the guilt or innocence of Rachelle Waterman, now 17.

There was no immediate word on whether prosecutors, who were in Ketchikan, would ask for a new trial.

The teenager sobbed at the defense table after the judge left the courtroom, where her defense attorney, Steven Wells, consoled her.

She was later led from the courtroom in handcuffs, and Wells told her distraught father, Carl "Doc" Waterman, "she's not guilty, you know she's not guilty."

Outside the courtroom, Wells said he planned to file a motion to have all charges against Waterman dropped. "We're disappointed, but we live to fight another day."

Rachelle Waterman was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, murder in the first- and second-degree, kidnapping, burglary, vehicle theft and tampering with evidence.

She was 16 when the charred body of her mother, Lauri Waterman, was found in the family's minivan off a remote logging road in November 2004.

The two men who carried out the killing, Jason Arrant and Brian Radel, were both former lovers of Rachelle Waterman. They have pleaded guilty to murder charges and testified in Waterman's trial.

Arrant told jurors that Waterman asked him to kill her mother. He enlisted the help of Radel who kidnapped Lauri Waterman from her home one night when she was alone. They suffocated her after botching an attempt to make her death look like a drunken-driving accident.

Waterman kept a Web log, or blog, called "My Crappy Life" that detailed her conflicts with her mother and growing up in the small town of 1,100 which she referred to as "Hell, Alaska." She told Arrant, Radel and police that her mother mentally and physically abused her.

Ketchikan District Attorney Stephen West said Arrant and Radel thought they were protecting Waterman from her mother. She admitted to police that she had discussed the idea with Arrant and that she was pretty sure the two would follow through with their plans after she told them her mother would be alone the weekend of the killing.

Waterman's attorney called her a typical, small-town girl who had the problems of other small-town girls.

She may have had problems with her mother, and she may have said her life would be better if her mother was not around, defense attorney Steven Wells said. But he argued that was not a request to kill Lauri Waterman.