"Unfortunately, when you're covering a story like this you descend on a town like a small army," said Daniel Leon, a producer for ABC News.

"It's something we have to do," he said. "If people want to watch news, they're going to have to put up with it."

"On the other hand," he added, "we should be more cognizant of the fact that people live in these areas where we're working."

The Woodward trial has received more attention in Cambridge than any trial in recent memory, residents said.

"I've lived here a long time and there have been horrendous crimes in this neighborhood, but they never got this kind of attention," said the elderly woman.

"It has captured the interest of people not only in Boston, but also the world," Cohn said. "This does not happen every day."

"This case played into every parent's fear about leaving their child, and it's played into every European's fear of going abroad," he added.

Residents' Opinions

The case, televised live on Court TV, brought living rooms into the jury box, as followers across the world heard the same evidence--minute-by-minute--that the jurors themselves heard.

Cambridge was no exception, and residents here made no bones about voicing their own views on the case, despite the hassle of the daily media coverage.

According to Cambridge Police Sgt. Steven Ahern, 300 people turned out at the Middlesex Superior Courthouse on a chilly Monday afternoon to support Woodward after the sentencing.

"I'm overjoyed, overwhelmed," said Markham H. Lyons, a Massachusetts politician who ran for the U.S. Senate unsuccessfully in 1978 and was rallying in favor of Woodward outside the courthouse.

Another demonstrator, Barbara Noll, a graduate student at MIT and former member of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement in Poland, began to sing "Yahweh, I know you are near" once Woodward's defense team stepped outside.

Many criticized the original verdict on the grounds of lack of evidence.

"They didn't have any proof that she did it," said Robert Santos, an East Cambridge resident, in an interview yesterday. "Nobody saw her do it, and they didn't have...[finger] prints of her on the kid or anything to say she did it," he added.