Eddie Robbins III, who had been jailed since December of last year on charges that he murdered two of his old high school pals, rejoined his family Tuesday afternoon after a Fayette County jury found him not guilty.

Robbins, 49, was accused of murdering David Mangham and Mike Fowler at Mangham’s north Fayette home in April 2003.

He was met outside the Fayette County Jail by his family, friends and the two attorneys who represented him in the case: Stacy Flynn and Tammy Jacobs. The attorneys said Thursday that Robbins always maintained his innocence and never wavered on that stance.

“He just had a nice personality, in every way,” said Flynn, who scored a victory in her first-ever murder case; she’s not yet two full years out of law school. Jacobs, who has 26 years as a defense attorney, assisted in the case and credited the entire defense team, including investigators and other attorneys who picked up more of a workload so Flynn could concentrate on the case.

“Stacy, I think, had 4,000 pages of stuff memorized for this case,” Jacobs said, lauding Flynn’s preparation for the case. “She knew the case better than anybody else, period.”

Jacobs said she felt for the Mangham and Fowler families because no matter what happened at the trial, it couldn’t change the fact that their loved ones were gone.

At the same time, Jacobs felt pleased for Robbins “because the system worked.” Robbins had been jailed for almost a year awaiting trial. After leaving jail, he drove through McDonald’s on the way home for a Quarter Pounder value meal, his attorneys said.

There was no physical evidence collected at the crime scene that could be connected to Robbins, and that may have been the major hindrance in the case. Mangham and Fowler were each shot twice in the head, but the murder weapon — determined to be a Colt .45 or a “Colt copy” pistol — has never been found.

The closest prosecutors got to tying Robbins to the murder weapon was to say that he used to own a Colt. 45 gun, which he says he traded away. Robbins, a painter, lives in Jonesboro with his wife, son and stepson along with his in-laws.

The jury deliberated the case an hour and a half, a relatively short time considering the trial lasted a full week. But District Attorney Scott Ballard said he wasn’t surprised with the quick verdict because the jury had been very attentive during the entire trial, and he expected they’d be prepared to deliberate quickly.

Although Ballard was disappointed to lose his first murder prosecution since taking office in January, he said he relied on faith that the judicial system worked. He took solace in the notion that the trial could at least help bring the victims’ families some sort of closure, even if the verdict wasn’t the one they expected.

A lack of physical evidence in the case may have hampered the case against Robbins, Ballard said.

He also credited the “excellent” work of the Fayette County Public Defender’s Office.

“They did a very thorough job of defending this case,” Ballard said.