Jury in Retrial of Etan Patz’s Accused Killer Begins Deliberations

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/nyregion/etan-patz-murder-trial-jury-deliberations.html

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A second jury is now deciding the fate of a former bodega worker accused of kidnapping and killing Etan Patz — a 6-year-old boy who vanished as he walked to a school bus stop in 1979 — once again raising the prospect of a resolution to a mystery that has hung over New York City for nearly four decades.

After three months of testimony in State Supreme Court, the jury began its deliberations in Manhattan on Wednesday, weighing whether the worker, Pedro Hernandez, was guilty of the charges against him.

As this group of jurors begins the process, there is another group uniquely able to understand the emotional pressures they face and the issues they must confront in a case fraught with complications.

“You’re extremely nervous, right?” said Cyndi Cueto, who was a juror at Mr. Hernandez’s first trial, which ended in a mistrial in 2015. “Because now you know it’s in your hands.”

She added: “We also wanted to go into that room, you know, open-minded. No matter what, you might be leaning a certain way, but you want to remain open-minded.”

Still, members of the earlier jury also described a sense of relief as their deliberations began: Finally, the moment had arrived when they could discuss what they had heard in court.

“It’s almost like getting a great weight off your shoulders,” said Adam Sirois, the lone juror who did not vote to convict Mr. Hernandez at the first trial.

Justice Maxwell Wiley, who is presiding over the case, assembled the new panel on Wednesday to explain the charges against Mr. Hernandez and the rules governing the deliberations. The eight men and four women of the jury left the courtroom at 3 p.m. to start their discussions.

Mr. Hernandez, who was an 18-year-old high school dropout working at a corner store in the SoHo neighborhood when Etan disappeared, was arrested in 2012 after his brother-in-law reported his suspicions to the authorities.

The prosecution’s case against Mr. Hernandez is based mostly on his confessions to investigators and other incriminating statements he made over the years. But by raising questions about his mental health and the possibility of a different killer, defense lawyers stirred enough doubt to leave the first jury deadlocked. Justice Wiley declared a mistrial after 18 days of deliberations failed to yield a verdict.

That outcome has loomed over the retrial, which started in October. It was evident in the jury-selection process, described by the judge as “extraordinarily long,” and in the oblique references to an “earlier proceeding” that lawyers, who did not mention the first trial in front of the jury, made as they questioned witnesses about their previous testimony.

Members of the first jury offered to help the lawyers strengthen their cases. Many of those who favored conviction met with prosecutors and, in some instances, wrote lengthy memorandums offering guidance on points to refine and even lines to use during the trial. (One suggested calling Mr. Hernandez a “serial confessor.”)

Some, like Ms. Cueto, have attended the retrial, sitting near Etan’s father, Stanley Patz.

“I’ve been here every day,” Ms. Cueto said after prosecutors finished their closing arguments on Tuesday. She said that taking in the second trial had confirmed her opinion of the case and “makes our decision even more certain.”

It has been difficult for some former jurors to pull away. Some held a vigil in 2015 on the anniversary of Etan’s disappearance.

“Eighteen of us spent three months confined for hours together in the jury room,” Edwin Thompson, a former juror, said.

“We became friends,” Mr. Thompson added, before referring to tensions that linger over divisions that emerged during deliberations. “We learned to respect one another,” he said, “with the notable exception of the holdout.”

That holdout, Mr. Sirois, has written about the case, and he attended the retrial’s opening statements and the judge’s instructions to the jury on Wednesday.

He said that some of his fellow jurors “did not want to think about the possibility of Mr. Hernandez being innocent.”

Regardless of what they believed, the former jurors acknowledged the difficult issues they faced in their deliberations.

Etan’s remains were never found, and prosecutors did not have scientific evidence from crime scenes to buttress their case. The defense has suggested a version of events in which Jose Ramos, a convicted child molester, may have been responsible.

There is also the issue of whether Mr. Hernandez might have falsely confessed to the killing, with the defense arguing that he has limited intelligence and a personality disorder that makes it hard for him to separate fantasy from reality. Mr. Hernandez’s lawyers argue that his confessions resulted from pressure applied by detectives and reflected a fiction he had concocted.

“Discounting confessions is a hard task,” said Shari Seidman Diamond, a professor of law and psychology at Northwestern University who studies jury behavior. “It’s hard for judges. It’s hard for jurors. It’s hard for observers. And that becomes fairly powerful evidence.”

Mr. Hernandez told law enforcement officials and mental health experts that he encountered a boy outside the bodega the morning Etan disappeared. He said he lured the boy into the store’s basement with the promise of a soda and then strangled him before putting his body in a box and leaving it with garbage.

His confessions, and incriminating statements he made to others, including his former wife and members of a church group, were a critical element for some jurors.

“In each instance, he was lucid, cogent and cooperative,” Mr. Thompson said. “He said, ‘O.K., you got me,’ then went on to explain how he murdered Etan and disposed of him.”

Mr. Hernandez, Mr. Thompson added, “was a most credible witness against himself — what’s not to believe?”

Mr. Sirois said he found the credibility of Mr. Hernandez’s former wife, with whom he had an acrimonious relationship, and the others who heard his admissions “extremely weak.” The testimony about Mr. Ramos also struck Mr. Sirois as worthy of consideration and contributed to his doubts.

“That was the part of the case that really gave the other jurors the most pause,” he said, calling Mr. Ramos a “much more likely suspect.”

In a case of such intense public interest, Professor Diamond said, jurors were probably aware of the attention and scrutiny their decision would receive. “The accountability factor is something that jurors do feel,” she said.

She said that in her experience studying juries, she had found that, above all, jurors were driven to “get it right,” adding, “Whatever that means to them.”