Juries do strange things. Lots of people try to avoid serving on juries and that makes a difference for who does get seated. Plus, a jury who saw 8 days of testimony and walked him in an hour and a half clearly saw something they didn't like. Usually a weakness in the evidence gets accounted for in the plea but this guy was already a sex offender so I'm guessing his plea offer was life or close to it. That will force a trial. It's easy to wonder how a case with a cold dna hit and registered sex offender goes south but the jury saw it that way and they saw more than anyone.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.