Well, the whole thing could again be viewed as a paradox. Maybe when Phyllis traded places back with Vicki and ended up, you-know-what (so as not to make a spoiler here), everything in time had reset itself back to the way it was. But that still leaves problems, such as Peter Bradford showing up as Jeff Clark and annoying the hell out of everyone. But then, if history really was changed, records would show the trial of Vicki. That was never brought up, and you would think somebody would've checked. The best thing to do is just ignore the inconsistencies that were created by time travel, otherwise one would suffer constant headaches. The only time they broached the topic was when our heroes returned from 1840/41 to discover, in that one brief scene back in the present, that everything that had happened leading to them going back in time never did happen. But then, like as it has been discussed here before, the past of 1840/41 was so drastically changed, that when our heroes returned, they should not have found the current family residing in Collinwood, but an entirely different one. However, let's not dwell on that, because we're already getting headaches.
Gerard