BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Updated Wed., May 13: 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 last Friday declared a mistrial.
It had 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. Twice he told them to keep trying.
However, last Friday, after they had sent their third message to the judge saying 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 evenly split 6-6, but the numbers went through several swings. Toward the end, there were two holdouts, then, finally, one — with 11 members wanting to convict and one member unconvinced by the testimony that Hernandez was guilty.
In a front-page headline on Sunday, the Daily News dubbed the lone holdout, Adam Sirois, “One Angry Man,” riffing on the famous courtroom movie “12 Angry Men.”
After the trial, however, Stanley Patz, Etan’s father, said he felt Hernandez did it, and he called for a retrial.
“This man did it. He said it,” he said. “How many times does a man have to confess before someone believes him? It’s not a hallucination.”
Some jurors were quoted saying that Sorois was bullying and sometimes flew off the handle. However, Harvey Fishbein, Hernandez’s lead defense attorney, said, from what he could tell, the holdout juror’s approach was completely “rational.”
Fishbein told The Villager, “The comments posted in reaction to the [news] articles regarding [Sorois’s] position and/or the jury deliberations appear to strongly support him and for good reason. Based on the articles, it appears his approach to the deliberations and his evaluation of the evidence was rational and pursuant to the judge’s instructions. It is not the job of a juror to convict but rather to determine if the evidence proves his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If not, the verdict should be not guilty.”
According to a source, a decision on whether there will be a retrial will be made by June 10.
Etan Patz went missing on the first day that his mother, Julie Patz, had allowed him to walk alone 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.
Julie Patz testified that Etan had $1 in his hand and was planning to buy a soda with it at the bodega. Hernandez, in his confession, claimed he lured the boy into the store’s basement with the promise of a free soda.
There is no physical evidence in the case. Etan’s body was never found. Neither were his pilot’s cap and a tote bag filled with toy cars, his lunch and pencils.
Hernandez claimed, in confessions to police, that, after strangling the boy, he put him — still alive — inside a bag and sealed it and then inside a banana box. He said he then dumped the body in an alley on Thompson St. — a block from the bodega at West Broadway and Prince St., where he was then working.
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 nothing. However, a brother-in-law subsequently tipped off authorities that Hernandez, then living in New Jersey, had previously spoken of killing a boy to family and church-group members.
The former bodega worker was arrested, and after a lengthy interrogation, confessed to police in Camden, N.J. 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.
As the trial was winding down, the jurors, among other things, asked about whether interviews at New Jersey police departments must be taped and whether a defendant can be convicted on his words alone.
Jose Ramos, long the primary suspect in Etan’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.
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.
Before the Hernandez trial, Stanley Patz always had felt Ramos was guilty. Each year, on the anniversaries of Etan’s birthday and disappearance, he would send Ramos a copy of Etan’s missing-child poster, with “What did you do to my little boy?” written on the back.
Cy Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, had campaigned for election on a promise that he would reopen the long-unsolved case.
Following the mistrial, Vance issued a statement, in which he reasserted his belief that Hernandez murdered Etan.
“We believe there is clear and corroborated evidence of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Vance said. “The challenges in this case were exacerbated by the passage of time, but they should not, and did not, deter us.”
The D.A. added, “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. 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.”
