Jury acquits Oregon woman who denied existence of baby she was accused of killing
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A jury took less than two hours Thursday to acquit an Oregon woman on trial for the second time on allegations that she killed her newborn son, in a case in which no remains were found and defense attorneys argued the woman was never pregnant.

Angelica Swartout's first trial ended earlier this year in a hung jury. Jurors in that trial said they were one vote shy of a unanimous guilty verdict, the Eugene Register-Guard (http://bit.ly/KBY767) reported.

In both trials, the 25-year-old former hotel clerk from Springfield stood in the witness stand and pushed out her stomach to demonstrate how she faked a pregnancy.

Swartout recanted a confession to police, testifying that after she got a false positive result on a pregnancy test, she pretended to be expecting because she became an "instant favorite" in a large adoptive family in which she had felt ignored.

She said she falsely told her family and friends that she delivered a stillborn son at a local hospital.


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