Video: 'Robert Blake Murder Trial - Not Guilty'

(Wednesday, March 16, 2005) — Robert Blake, the 71-year-old actor who has spent most of his life in front of a camera, was spared the prospect of death in prison today when a jury acquitted him of the 2001 murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

Upon hearing the verdict, Blake, who had maintained a grim facade throughout the three-month trial, wept into the shoulder of his lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach.

Blake was later found liable in a civil court and ordered to pay her children $30 million, an award that an appeals court subsequently cut in half; Blake has declared bankruptcy.