Cook County prosecutors' first-ever terrorism case collapsed Friday when jurors instead found three men who

built Molotov cocktails in the days before the 2012 NATO summit guilty of mob action charges and explosives counts that could carry hefty prison sentences. Prosecutors alleged that the so-called NATO 3 had plotted attacks on police stations, President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's home. But defense attorneys, bolstered by undercover police recordings that prosecutors played in court, argued that the three were goofs who talked big and were goaded on by two undercover police officers. After deliberating nearly eight hours, jurors rejected the two most serious counts of the indictment providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism. Instead they convicted the men of two counts of misdemeanor mob action and two felony counts of possessing an incendiary device. They acquitted them on two other counts of possessing an incendiary device and one count of solicitation of arson. The felony convictions carry the potential for prison sentences ranging from four to 30 years for Brian Church, 22, Jared Chase, 29, and Brent Betterly, 25, who have all been held in custody since their arrests in May 2012. Not surprisingly, both sides declared victory. Attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin, who represented Chase, praised the jury for seeing that prosecutors had overreached with the terrorism charges. Durkin contended that the charges were motivated in part by the extensive costs of security for the world leaders attending the NATO summit in Chicago. This was a political prosecution in every sense of the word, he told reporters following the verdict. That's the slippery slope we start sliding down with charges like this. When we start to trivialize terrorism and charge protesters with terrorism, then we are threatening all kinds of rights to protest and to speak out, said Church's attorney, Michael Deutsch. But State's Attorney Anita Alvarez staunchly defended the decision to bring the terrorism charges as four of her assistants who handled the prosecution looked on as if shell-shocked. We felt very strongly that the evidence and the facts supported the charges, and I would bring them again tomorrow with no apologies and no second-guessing, Alvarez angrily told reporters. How is this a defeat? This is not a defeat. These three gentlemen have been found I shouldn't call them gentlemen these three men have been found guilty of felonies.

I would bring these charges again because you know what we did, we saved people from being hurt. OK? Do we have to wait for a Chicago police officer to be set on fire? I don't think so. Do we have to wait for that neighborhood bank to go up in flames? I don't think so. You know what, my job is public safety. And that's exactly what we did. Have we forgotten about Boston here? Have we forgotten about homemade bombs in backpacks? The trial was seen as the first test of a state terrorism law enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. By that standard, it was a blow for Alvarez as jurors decided the defendants' conduct constituted mob action and not terrorism. The heart of the case came down to two undercover Chicago police officers who infiltrated the group by posing as activists and secretly recording their conversations. Both testified as dozens of the undercover recordings were played for jurors. It was unclear what the seven-man, five-woman jury thought about the evidence. At first, court officials had announced some jurors would speak to reporters but then said they had decided against that. While a media liaison for Judge Thaddeus Wilson had promised to release the names of jurors after the verdict, the judge instead said he sealed the names at the request of jurors. Defense attorneys played up the men's incompetence, painting them as having delusions of protesting grandeur. But they were frequently drunk, high and unable to complete simple tasks, once missing out on a protest because Church had to wait for his pot dealer. One of the undercover officers told an apologetic Church that he needed to make a to-do list in the morning before smoking pot. Church also said he wanted to attack four police stations but didn't want to Google the locations of two of them. Chase advocated attacking Obama's re-election campaign headquarters with a slingshot and marbles. Church declined when Nadia Chikko, one of the undercover officers, asked Church if he wanted to try out one of the Molotovs they'd built with four empty beer bottles, some gasoline and a cut-up bandana from Mehmet Uygun, the other undercover officer. I'm too (expletive) cold to be going anywhere. I want to wrap up in my blanket and sleep, he said. The defense argued that the recordings and a Facebook post showed that the men's intentions were not sinister at all but rather outlandish.

But prosecutors couldn't have disagreed more, contending the three had been plotting to commit terrorist acts since before they drove to Chicago from Florida. They argued that it was intent that mattered, not how well-executed or feasible their plans were. Prosecutors repeatedly played up the most damaging moments of the recordings, most prominently Church's question to an undercover officer as the Molotovs were being built on the back porch of a Bridgeport neighborhood three-flat where the three out-of-town defendants were staying: Ready to see a police officer on fire? In closing arguments Thursday, Assistant State's Attorney Jack Blakey accused the three of trying to conceal their violent plans behind the legacy of nonviolent protest. Martin Luther King? Gandhi? Mother Teresa? I don't see them in court, he said. The NATO 3's fate will rest in the hands of Judge Wilson, who presided over the trial. At an earlier hearing at which defense lawyers had asked him to throw out the terrorism charges before the case went to jurors, Wilson, required at that stage to view the evidence in the light most favorable for prosecutors, had offered that if the men's attacks had been successful, that's terror. This is America, and that is terror, he said.