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“Is Daniel Edward Ehrlick Jr. guilty or not guilty of first-degree murder?” a clerk read aloud for the court. “Answer is: guilty.”

It took nearly two years, hundreds of witnesses and tens of thousands of pages of documentation for the jury to begin its deliberations. But it took the 12 jurors less than two hours to reach a unanimous guilty verdict.

The judge asked each juror if they supported the guilty claim. Twelve times jurors responded: “yes.” Those yes votes from that randomly selected sample of the population left Ehrlick slumped in his seat and the word justice on the tip of seemingly everyone else’s tongue.

"It's good to know that justice was served for Robert,” Ada County Prosecutor Dan Dinger said.

“We have closure and Robert has justice,” Robert’s Aunt Trish Burrell said. “And God will take care of the rest of it.”
 
“The system worked and we got some justice for my son,” Robert’s father Charles said.

Charles Manwill’s son got his justice. But even in the shadow of victory, the prosecution made clear: A guilty verdict for his killer won’t bring Robert back.

“Certainly this doesn't make it better,” Dinger said.

But perhaps it can bring some semblance of peace to his family.

“We lost a whole piece of our family because of two peoples' stupid decisions,” Burrell said.

After the verdict came across, Ehrlick bowed his head as though struck by a realization – if not of the horror of the crime he committed, then perhaps of where and how he might spend this next phase of his life.