SAN DIEGO -- If history is any indicator, the San Diego County District Attorney's Office faces immense pressure in prosecuting accused killer John Gardner.

Gardner's trial will possibly be one of the most watched in San Diego's history, and recent blockbuster cases like the Gardner case tend to make or break a district attorney's career.

A not-guilty verdict in the 1993 Dale Akiki case got then-District Attorney Ed Miller voted out of office.

"You know I love this office," Miller said at the time.

Love was not enough to save him from voters after his deputies filed charges against Akiki for child abuse and kidnapping. After the 7-month trial, the jury took seven hours to set the wrongly accused Akiki free. Later, a civil court awarded Akiki millions of dollars because of the case.

"I relied on the best information and advice available to me at that time, and for that I accept full responsibility," said Miller.

Miller's successor, Paul Pfingst, defeated him soundly in the next election, but he too would fall to a similar mistake.

"Our office has the highest conviction rate in the state of California," Pfingst prior to the Stephanie Crowe case in the late 1990s.

It wasn't a failed conviction, but the lack of charges that would help show Pfingst the door.

"He did this. He came into our house and murdered my daughter and now the police are just going to let him walk away," Stephanie Crowe's father, Stephen, said of neighborhood transient Richard Tuite.

The Crowe family said Tuite killed 12-year-old Stephanie, and her blood was eventually found on his shirt.

However, instead of charging Tuite, the district attorney's office charged Stephanie's brother and two of his friends.

The case was even packaged into a made-for-TV movie after it was discovered that confessions from the boys who were charged had been coerced.

The problems with the case cost Pfingst his job, as current District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis used Pfingst's role in the case in her election campaign.

Now, Dumanis' office is in charge of prosecuting Gardner.