BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | After 18 days of deliberations, and with the jury in the Etan Patz for the third time saying they could not reach a unanimous verdict, the judge has declared a mistrial.
It has been one of the longest jury deliberations in recent memory in New York City.
Pedro Hernandez, 54, had been on trial since January, accused of kidnapping and murdering the 6-year-old boy in a Soho bodega’s basement in 1979.
The jury twice had previously told the judge — State Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley — that they were deadlocked and could not reach a verdict. But twice he told them to keep trying.
However, according to The New York Times, around 3 p.m. on Friday, after they had sent their third message to him telling they were hopelessly deadlocked, Wiley announced, “I think at this point, I would have to call the deliberations at an end and dismiss them.”
The jury reportedly, at one point, was split 6-6, but the numbers went through changes. At the end, there was a lone holdout, with 11 members wanting to convict and one member unconvinced by the testimony that Hernandez was guilty.
Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, though, said he felt Hernandez did it, and asked how many times a man must confess before being found guilty.
Etan Patz went missing on the first day that his mother, Julie Patz, had allowed him to walk alone by himself the short distance to the school-bus stop to P.S. 3. He would have walked from their home on Prince St. just west of Greene St. two blocks west to West Broadway.
Etan’s body was never found and there is no physical evidence in the case. Hernandez claimed, in confessions to police, that, after strangling the boy, he dumped his body in an alley on Thompson St., a block from the bodega — where he was then working — at West Broadway and Prince St.
In 2012, renewed focus was brought to the infamous cold case when, based on a tip, the F.B.I. searched a basement at Prince and Wooster Sts. looking for evidence, but found none. However, a family member subsequently tipped off authorities that Hernandez, then living in New Jersey, had previously spoken of killing the boy.
The former bodega worker was arrested, and after a lengthy interrogation, confessed to New Jersey police. But, during the trial, his defense team countered that he has low intelligence and other mental problems, and so is highly suggestible, and that the confession was coerced.
On Friday, CBS News reported, “The jurors have also asked for instructions on the law regarding whether interviews at New Jersey police departments must be taped and whether or not a defendant can be convicted on his words alone without additional proof.”
Jose Ramos, long the primary suspect in Patz’s disappearance, is currently in jail in Pennsylvania for failing to register an address under Megan’s Law after his release from prison on child-molestation charges.
Ramos was reportedly the boyfriend of the Patzes’ babysitter. Ira Blutreich, The Villager’s cartoonist — whose wife, Iris, used to have a puppet-making studio in Soho back in the 1970s — previously told the newspaper that Ramos was known as a homeless drifter who rambled around Soho late at night wearing a Mexican blanket and a cap festooned with buttons and pins and accompanied by a large dog. Blutreich’s daughter told The Villager she was scared of Ramos, in particular, his dark eyes.
The defense brought Ramos to New York City for Hernandez’s trial, but he refused to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
Cy Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, had campaigned on a promise that he would reopen the long-unsolved Etan Patz case.
Following the mistrial, Vance issued a statement, in which he reasserted his belief in “the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“I would like to thank the Patz family for the courage and determination they have shown over the past 36 years, and particularly throughout this trial,” Vance said. “The legacy they have built in the four decades since this tragedy occurred, both in raising awareness about the plight of missing children and through the creation of laws to protect them, has made our city, and our society, safer for children.
“I would also like to thank the prosecutors in my office and our partners in law enforcement for devoting their time, skills and expertise to one of the city’s most painful and unresolved cases. We believe there is clear and corroborated evidence of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The challenges in this case were exacerbated by the passage of time, but they should not, and did not, deter us.
“Finally, I would like to recognize the service of the jurors in this case. For more than three months, these men and women interrupted their lives to fulfill one of our society’s most important civic responsibilities, and I am grateful for their sacrifice and attention to this case.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if there will be a retrial.
