Mrs Sharkey told the jury of 10 women and five men that she and her daughter Bridget and her husband's half brother EricStevens had spent three weeks in the summer in Florida with Thomas junior before all flying home.
Hanging over the Edwards case was the specter of the Stevens case, where the department's public integrity unit suffered a major loss in 2009, when Attorney General Eric Holder asked a judge to dismiss the conviction of Mr. Stevens because of prosecutor misconduct.