He decided to take the deal.

Science and the law

Lisa feels many emotions when she allows herself to think about the last five years: outrage, heartbreak, longing for the time when Alejandro would wake up at night with Lucas, gently coaxing him back to sleep in his arms.

One thing she doesn't feel is vindicated.

Her husband is free, and yet he is not.

Alejandro got out of jail Nov. 22, 2005, but two years later, the couple, both 33, are living apart.

Wary of the U.S. legal system, Alejandro moved back to Costa Rica and went to work again at an eco-tourism company. Had he stayed in Pennsylvania, he would have been under court-ordered supervision until his probation ended - just a few weeks ago.

He was here legally before, but worries it would be tough for him to come back even for a visit, given that he has the equivalent of a conviction on his record. And he certainly does not want to live here.

"They took my son, they took my wife, they took everything I had," Alejandro said of his accusers.

Lisa stayed in Pennsylvania teaching so she could save money to move to Costa Rica someday and rejoin her husband. She visits when she can afford it, and had hoped to move there this fall. But that hasn't happened.

It's clear the ordeal has been a strain.

"I don't know if it's going to happen or not," said her father, Ron. "We love him like a son, you know."

Alejandro does not regret taking the deal.

"I didn't do anything," he said, sitting in his parents' living room, a photo of Lucas on top of the TV. And if he had been found guilty, he added, "I would never see the light for a long, long time."

Lisa can't fault him for wanting to be free. But part of her wishes he had taken his chances with a jury.

"What it ended up doing was ultimately making me have - it's awful to say - a little bit less respect for him for selling himself short," she said.

She said she thought others had been wrongly accused of shaking babies, and she stays in regular contact with a network of people who have spouses in prison. She still wants someone to suffer consequences for what happened to her family, some sort of finding that Alejandro did no wrong.

Prosecutor Marshall said that wasn't going to happen, though he said the original first-degree-murder charge - which was not his decision - was a reach.

"We had no evidence of motive," Marshall said. "Why would he want to kill his baby?"