New Delhi, July 3 -- BELFAST - Lyra McKee's family left a courtroom together on Thursday afternoon, and justice was somewhere else.

Three men charged with her murder - Paul McIntyre, 58, Peter Cavanagh, 38, and Jordan Gareth Devine, 25 - were found not guilty by Justice Patricia Smyth, who delivered her verdict in the non-jury trial at Belfast Crown Court. As AP reported, the trial was held intermittently over the past two years; the prosecution's case rested on joint enterprise, and the evidence, as the judge confirmed, was almost entirely circumstantial.

McKee, a 29-year-old journalist, was shot on April 18, 2019, in the Creggan area of Derry, killed by a bullet as she stood near police vehicles observing civil disturbances that had t...