A jury on Tuesday acquitted a Los Alamos woman of vehicular homicide and other charges in connection with the death of her husband nearly four years ago.

After the verdict, a lawyer for Penny Granich blasted the state Attorney General's Office for prosecuting the case, saying it wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars.

"This case had already been rejected by two district attorney's offices, but for some reason the attorney general decided to drag these families through this nightmare and no one can understand why they did that," said John Day, who represented Granich along with Mark Donatelli. "No one seems to know why they made the decisions they made."

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Gutierrez, who prosecuted the case, did not return several phone messages left for him Tuesday afternoon.

Along with the homicide count, Granich also was charged with driving while intoxicated and reckless driving for steering her husband's pickup off a 350-foot cliff at Overlook Park in White Rock during the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 2005.

The jury of four men and eight women deliberated a little more than four hours on Friday and Tuesday before returning with the not-guilty verdict on all three counts just before noon.

During opening arguments, Gutierrez told jurors that Thomas Granich, 32, and Penny Granich, now 35, had been drinking at a Los Alamos bar before the crash. The last time anyone saw them before the fatal plunge, Penny Granich was very intoxicated and her sister helped her into the truck's passenger seat, Gutierrez said, while Thomas Granich, who didn't seem intoxicated but whose blood-alcohol content was at least 0.13, drove the truck, he said.

Somehow, the couple ended up at Overlook Park, the site of their wedding. Gutierrez said Penny Granich drove the truck the length of two football fields, across brush and roads, before plunging off the cliff. Thomas Granich died of head and neck injuries consistent with being ejected through the front windshield. Penny Granich survived because she was wearing the driver's-side seat belt, he said.

However, Donatelli told jurors during his opening statement last week that there were far more unknown facts in the case than known ones. He said it wasn't clear who was driving the truck, how fast it was going when it went off the cliff or what time it went off the cliff. Also, he argued that police conducted an incomplete and shoddy investigation, further clouding what might have occurred.

The trial was scheduled to last until last Thursday, although the jury didn't get the case until about 7:40 p.m. Friday. They deliberated until a little after 9 p.m. Friday, before returning to the state district court complex downtown Tuesday morning. The court was closed Monday in observance of Columbus Day.

The jury, however, was not a Los Alamos County jury. Rather, the jurors were from Santa Fe County because state District Judge Michael Vigil ruled that pre-trial publicity in the Los Alamos area was enough to move the trial to Santa Fe.

Before the Attorney General's Office picked up the case, the offices of former Santa Fe District Attorney Henry Valdez and former Farmington District Attorney Lyndy Bennett both reviewed the case and declined to prosecute, according to court documents.

Police alleged in search warrants filed months before the trial that Thomas Granich's death might have been "other than accidental." However, Gutierrez said Tuesday before the verdict that his theory wasn't that Penny Granich intended to kill her husband by driving off the cliff.

Penny Granich, who did not want to talk to news reporters, works as an administrative assistant in the Los Alamos area and has a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter, Day said. Her daughter's father was Thomas Granich, he said.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.