Jury In Etan Patz Murder Trial Asks To View Evidence During 3rd Day Of Deliberations
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The jury at the Etan Patz murder trial had its third day of deliberations Friday.
Jurors received the case against 54-year-old Pedro Hernandez – the man accused of luring and killing the 6-year-old boy in SoHo in 1979 – Wednesday afternoon.
Hernandez was a clerk at a corner bodega in SoHo that Etan visited often. He is accused of luring the little boy into the bodega basement with promises of a soda and then strangling him.
On Friday, the jury asked to see the card with Miranda warnings he initialed after waving his right to remain silent, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported. They then asked for a missing child poster of Etan Patz that Hernandez was shown during a 7-hour interrogation which led to his confession.
As Cornell reported, he had signed it and wrote on it that he choked the boy-- misspelling the word "choked."
The jury's questions to the judge involve how Hernandez's statements were obtained, and defense attorney Harvey Fishbein believes jurors may be considering whether there was undue influence, 1010 WINS' Juliet Papa reported.
"As a result of being in custody for 7 1/2 hours, he came out of that time period believing that he had actually harmed Etan Patz," Fishbein said Friday.
Etan's body was never found, but a judge declared him legally dead in 2001. Hernandez had never been considered a suspect — his name appears only once in law enforcement paperwork at the time Etan disappeared.
But prosecutors presented evidence that Hernandez confessed several times to church group members in the years following the crime and then to police in 2012.
The defense says Hernandez is mentally ill, has a very low IQ and can't tell fantasy from reality.
Defense attorneys also said prosecutors have the wrong man on trial. The defense has pointed repeatedly to convicted child molester Jose Ramos as the real suspect. But prosecutors told jurors during closing arguments that while Ramos may be a convicted pedophile, he is not guilty in this case.
On Thursday, in addition to Hernandez's medical records and videotaped admissions, jurors heard a read back of the testimony of his first wife then asked for her written statement.
"Her written statement did not contain anything about a picture from the poster and how critical it was to her and how she would never forget that because it changed her life," Fishbein said.
His ex-wife found a missing poster of Etan Patz among Hernandez's possessions several years after the boy's disappearance.
Five women and seven men will decide whether Hernandez is guilty or not on three separate charges: second-degree murder, felony murder and kidnapping.
The two different murder charges result from different theories under the law. If the jury finds that Hernandez deliberately killed Etan, they will convict him on second-degree murder charges.
If the panel decides Etan's death resulted from actions during the course of a kidnapping, they will find him guilty on the felony murder charge.
Each of the three charges is punishable by 25 years to life in prison.
Etan's photo was one of the first on milk cartons. The day he went missing, May 25, became National Missing Children's Day.
Deliberations were to resume Monday.
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