Jurors also acquitted Blake of one charge that Blake solicited murder, but deadlocked on a second solicitation charge. The jury voted 11-1 in favor of acquittal and the judge dismissed the count.

Outside court, Blake thanked his defense team and described the emotional and financial toll of the case. He said his lawyers saved his life.

"If you want to know how to go through $10 million in five years, ask me," he said. "I'm broke, I need a job."

The jury of seven men and five women delivered the verdicts on its ninth day of deliberations.

"They couldn't put the gun in his hand," jury foreman Thomas Nicholson told reporters outside court.

Defense attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach said Blake weathered the grueling trial with more composure than he did.

"He doesn't know which door he's walking out of. He doesn't know if he's getting his life back or whether or not his life is over," the lawyer said.

The verdicts followed a trial with a cast a characters that included two Hollywood stuntmen who said Blake tried to get them to bump off his wife.

The 71-year-old star of the 1970s detective drama "Baretta" dropped his head as the verdict was read, hugged his attorney as he sobbed heavily and later almost fell while reaching for a water bottle.

The adult daughter of Blake's wife sobbed quietly in the back of the courtroom.

Blake had been charged with murder, two counts of solicitation of murder and a special circumstance of lying in wait.

The murder charge and special circumstance enhancement could have carried a sentence of life in prison; prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. The solicitation counts could have carried a maximum of 11 years.

Blake was charged with shooting 44-year-old Bonny Lee Bakley to death in their car outside the actor's favorite Italian restaurant on May 4, 2001, less than six months after their marriage.

Prosecutors said Blake believed his wife trapped him by getting pregnant. They said Blake became smitten with the baby, Rosie, when she was born and desperately wanted to keep the child away from Bakley, whom he considered an unfit mother.

Bakley had been married several times, had a record for mail fraud and made a living scamming men out of money with nude pictures of herself and promises of sex.

"He was tricked by Bonny Lee and he hated her for it," prosecutor Shellie Samuels said in closing arguments. "He got taken by a small-time grifter."

The defense called it a weak case that lacked physical evidence and was built largely on the testimony of two witnesses who were once heavy drug users.

Blake was acquitted of asking one of those witnesses, Gary McLarty, to murder Bakley.

"His testimony in my view was so disjointed and so irregular in what he was trying to say. It had no bearing in my judgment," jury foreman Nicholson said about McLarty's account on the witness stand.

The judge dismissed a second charge that he asked Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton to kill his wife. Nicholson called Hambleton a "prolific liar."

"The prosecution built their case on the backs of those two men and neither one of them was worthy of belief," Schwartzbach said outside court.

No eyewitnesses, blood or DNA evidence linked Blake to the crime. The murder weapon, found in a trash bin near the car where Bakley was killed, could not be traced to Blake, and witnesses said the minuscule amounts of gunshot residue found on Blake's hands could have come from a different gun he said he carried for protection.

The four-month trial was part of a wave of celebrity court cases in California that have provided endless fodder for the tabloids and cable networks. The Michael Jackson child molestation trial started just as the Blake case was wrapping up. Rock 'n' roll producer Phil Spector will stand trial later this year in Los Angeles for allegedly murdering a B-movie actress.

Blake has been in front of the camera from childhood, back when he was sad-eyed little Mickey in the "Our Gang" movies, and was nominated for an Oscar for the 1967 movie "In Cold Blood," in which he portrayed a killer who dies on the gallows.

In "Baretta," Blake played a tough-talking, street-smart detective whose catchphrase was "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

Those acting successes seemed well in the past by the time a divorced and lonely Blake met Bakley at a jazz club five years ago. They had sex in his truck that night, and she was soon carrying Blake's child. They were wed in a no-frills ceremony in 2000 in which the bride wore an electronic monitoring bracelet because she was still on probation for fraud.

Prosecutors said Blake killed his wife after failing to persuade a street thug-turned-minister and two stuntmen from his "Baretta" days to do the job. One of the stuntmen said Blake talked about having Bakley "snuffed," and mentioned locations for the killing, including the Grand Canyon.

Also, a former detective who worked for Blake as a private investigator testified that the actor proposed to kidnap Bakley, force her to have an abortion and, if that did not work, "whack her."

The defense portrayed the stuntmen as drug users prone to hallucinations and delusions.

The police "convicted Mr. Blake on the night of the murder, and then they conducted an incompetent investigation," defense attorney Schwartzbach said during the trial.

Blake told authorities that he walked his wife to the car after dinner then discovered he had left his gun back in a booth at Vitello's Restaurant. He went to get it then returned to the car and found his wife shot, he said.

But some witnesses testified that Blake did not appear to be sincere as he wept and moaned over the slaying that night. One witness said the actor appeared to be "turning it on and off."

Blake did not testify during the trial. But his lawyer showed the jury a videotape of a jailhouse interview with Barbara Walters in which he denied killing his wife.

"It's all about Rosie. It's always been about Rosie," Blake said. "The greatest gift in the world, and I'm going to try to mess it up by being selfish?"

Rosie, now 4, is being raised by Blake's adult daughter.

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