It is shocking to see that in the US you can be convicted on the basis of hearsay, speculation etc. that leaves more than enough room for reasonable doubt.

In this particular case you could even argue that Lobato being guilty is a hypothesis that is not credible given all the facts. There is no forensic evidence that points to Lobato and the circumstancial "evidence" like this:

"In trial, Kephart relied heavily on Lobato's statements to the police and to friends in Panaca. She had told friends she had cut off the penis of a Las Vegas man who had sexually assaulted her. One of those confidants, a teacher, later tipped police. But the teacher, Dixie Tienken, told the jury in the retrial that she thought Lobato had said the attack happened much earlier than July and that Lobato had left her attacker alive."

simply isn't evidence at all. You can always take statements out of context, tell a story based in that. Ask Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld how they concluded that Saddam had WMD and even how they cncluded that they were in the neighborhood of Ramadi, despite all the evidence coming from the inspectors who found nothing when they checked out the sites suspected to contain WMD.