. >> reporter: prosecutors bob edwards and tiffany starr smith saw this case as a relationship turnedtalking about -- domestic violence. we're still talking about orders of protection, and all of the things that go wrong in those situations. >> reporter: you had no witnesses. you had no dna from your suspect. you had no murder weapon. that's a lot of things you didn't have. >> if we didn't feel like we could prosecute it, and be successful, we would've never indicted it. we would have never proceeded with it. >> circumstantial cases are -- allow you to be creative. you can take a set of facts -- and -- and weave a story together for your theory of prosecution. >> reporter: shawn smoot insisted he was innocent. he cycled through five different defense attorneys and the trial was delayed again and again. >> it was surreal, really. you know -- 'cause it had been reset 22 times, 22 times. >> reporter: that's torture. >> it is. it is torture. >> reporter: the trial finally started in july 2016, nearly five years after brooke died. robert jolley, smoot's fifth attorney, believed the state's