Boot camp guards acquitted in beating case

PANAMA CITY, Fla., Oct. 12 (UPI) -- A jury acquitted seven former guards and a nurse Friday of causing the death of a teenage boy who was brutally beaten in a Florida boot camp.

The verdict came after 90 minutes of deliberation, The Miami Herald reported.

Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died after he was kicked and hit for 30 minutes soon after his arrival at the Bay County Boot Camp in the Florida Panhandle. But prosecutors conceded that the beating, which was videotaped, didn't cause his death, instead saying that the methods used to bring him round after he lost consciousness suffocated him.

Defense lawyers said that Anderson suffered from sickle cell trait, a genetic disorder common among people of African descent that often shows no symptoms.

''If the cause of death would have been beating, it would have been a different case all together,'' David Markus, a Miami lawyer, told the Herald.