Chris and Maxine McNair, Denise's parents, and Junie Collins, Addie's sister, shared hugs with U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who led the prosecution team in state court.

"Justice delayed is still justice, and we've got it right here in Birmingham tonight," said Jones.

"I hope they get a little comfort in the verdict," Robbins said of the victims' families. "Our hearts go out to them."

Robbins sought earlier unsuccessfully to move the trial out of Birmingham. "I would think that this trial in another community... probably would have had a different verdict."

Garrett had sequestered the jurors and alternates since April 23 and declined to release their names, in contrast with normal trial procedure. None of them commented to the media Tuesday. "We just want to go home and relax," one said.

As news of the verdict spread over the radio, motorists honked and hung out of windows clapping as they passed by the old Jefferson County Courthouse.

"I'll sleep well tonight, better than I've slept in many years," said the Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods, a leader of Birmingham's black community who pushed authorities to reopen the case.

Woods, the president of Birmingham's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and pastor at St. Joseph Baptist Church, said the verdict "makes a statement of how far we've come."

Robbins said the short deliberations indicated jurors disregarded the evidence and ruled with their sentiments. "Basically, they were just caught up in the emotion of the case," he said.

Robbins said a main issue on appeal will be the legality of surveillance tapes the FBI made at Blanton's apartment in 1964, without a warrant. He also said he plans to raise issues with the appeals court involving jury selection but did not specify.

"You saw the makeup of the jury," he said of the final panel, which included no white men. "Draw your own conclusions."

The jury that decided the case included eight white women, three black women and one black man. Two white men and two black men had been the alternates. The judge dismissed them before the jury began deliberations.

Jones praised the jury.

"They thought about it. They deliberated. They analyzed the evidence," he said. "There was not an overwhelming amount of evidence for them to look at. ... That doesn't mean that they didn't give it due consideration."

Estella Boyd, 73, a longtime church member who knew the victims, wept softly moments after the verdict.

"I'm just happy he had the courage to drive the matter," she said of Jones.

Among the more than 300 people who watched closing arguments Tuesday morning were Jefferson County Circuit Judge Art Hanes and former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington. Hanes defended Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, the only other man convicted for the bombing, in his 1977 trial. Chambliss died in prison in 1985.

Originally the FBI had four suspects in the bombing: Chambliss, Blanton, Herman Cash and Bobby Frank Cherry. Cash died in 1994 before ever being charged. Cherry was indicted last year along with Blanton. His trial was indefinitely postponed early last month when Garrett ruled that he was not mentally competent. Prosecutors are seeking another psychiatric evaluation, hoping to challenge Garrett's ruling.

Chambliss' trial was held in the same courtroom as Blanton's, three stories above a large lobby that features a pair of two-story murals. One of them depicts an elegantly dressed white woman high above slaves working in fields. The other shows a well-dressed white businessman towering over black laborers in an iron mill.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey began the day by reminding jurors of testimony that Blanton was a violent racist and a womanizer in the 1960s. Posey rehashed other testimony as several giant TV screens displayed family pictures of the four victims. He showed Denise McNair's portrait last.

"This defendant killed this beautiful child because of the color of her skin," Posey said. "He killed those four worshippers in God's house on a Sunday morning because he was a man of hate."

Robbins urged jurors to look at what he called insufficient evidence.

"We leave the emotion at home on the doorstep with the families, where it belongs," Robbins said. The jury, he said, needed to show the world that "we are not going to simply sacrifice some person for some closure.

"If you do that, if you make your decision that way, then those four girls died in vain," Robbins said.

Posey used the same phrase for the prosecution.

"These children must not have died in vain," Posey said. "Don't let the deafening blast from his bomb be what's left ringing in our ears."

Robbins told jurors their civic duty lay in rendering an impartial verdict, not righting the wrongs of Birmingham's past.

"Don't get lost in the moment," Robbins told the jury. "We've got a courtroom full of people thinking this is some moment in history that we all have to watch. Don't get caught up in that."

Jones played to the 11-woman, one-man jury by gesturing toward Maxine McNair and Alpha Robertson, Carole Robertson's wheelchair-bound mother.

"A mother's heart never stops crying," Jones said several times.

Jones recalled testimony from Sarah Collins Rudolph, another sister of Addie's. Rudolph, who was in the same room as the other four girls and was partially blinded, said she called out in vain for her sister after the explosion.