Etan Patz Jury Deadlocks Again, Judge Orders Them To Keep Trying To Reach Verdict
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The jury in the Etan Patz murder case informed the judge Tuesday that it is once again deadlocked.
"After serious, significant and thorough deliberations, we remain unable to reach a unanimous decision," the jury's note read.
Just as he did a week ago, Judge Maxwell Wiley responded by urging jurors to continue deliberating, CBS2's Jessica Schneider reported.
"I direct you to continue your deliberations now," Wiley told jurors.
Etan Patz Jury Again Tells Judge It Can't Reach Verdict
The judge overruled objections by both sides, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported.
Prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said it sounded like Wiley was telling jurors that any verdict will be acceptable, but she argued that the people of New York would rather see a second trial than an acquittal.
Defense attorney Harvey Fishbein, meanwhile, asked for a mistrial.
Etan Patz Jury Again Tells Judge It Can't Reach Verdict
"This is a tired jury, and they have said they are finished, and we ask the court to respect that and not to send them back," he said.
Wiley told jurors not to be concerned about the publicity surrounding the case -- and the inevitable scrutiny that would follow a verdict. He said any verdict based on the evidence would be a just one.
Etan Patz Jury Deadlocks Again, Judge Orders Them To Keep Trying To Reach Verdict
"If any of you is concerned about the effect on persons who have an outcome in this case, please have no such concern," Wiley said. "Your verdict ... will be second-guessed publicly by any number of people, but please do not be concerned by any of that."
"He's encouraging them to try to reach a verdict free of sympathy or expecatis," said Fishbein. "They see a lot of press and the case has historic nature to it. Encouraging them to judge this case in terms of facts, evidence. In that sense I found the charge to be perhaps helpful."
Jurors did not look happy about being sent back to the jury room, Cornell reported.
After a 10-week trial, the jury has been trying to reach a unanimous verdict for three weeks now. Tuesday marked its 15th day of deliberations.
The jury is considering the case against Pedro Hernandez, 54, accused of killing 6-year-old Etan, who disappeared while walking to his SoHo bus stop in 1979.
Hernandez was arrested in 2012 after his brother-in-law told police Hernandez had said years earlier that he killed a child.
Hernandez, now 54, confessed to police that he offered Etan a soda to entice him into the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked. Then, Hernandez said, he choked the boy and dumped him in a box with some curbside trash. Etan's body has never been found.
"Something just took over me, and I was just choking him," the Maple Shade, New Jersey, man confessed to police. "He just kind of stood there, and I just felt bad, what I did."
Defense attorneys say Hernandez is mentally ill and his confession to police was coerced, Schneider reported.
Last week, jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict after 10 full days of deliberating, but the judge told them to keep trying then, too.
They have requested read-backs of testimonies and closing arguments, reviews of exhibits and even a computer with Microsoft Excel so they could organize their thoughts.
On Monday, they asked for more technology -- a printer so that each of the jurors could have a hard copy of the spreadsheet.
Defense lawyers say Hernandez's confession is fiction, dreamed up by a mentally ill man with a low IQ and a history of hallucinations and fueled by several hours of police questioning before Hernandez was read his rights.
The defense also has pointed repeatedly to convicted child molester Jose Ramos as the real suspect.
Ramos has denied involvement, but a former federal prosecutor and FBI agent testified that Ramos told investigators he was "90 percent" sure a boy he took from a park was Etan, and Hernandez's former prison cellmate testified that Ramos admitted molesting the boy.
Ramos dated a woman who was hired to walk Etan home from school during a bus strike.
But prosecutors told jurors during closing arguments that while Ramos may be a convicted pedophile, investigators never found enough evidence to charge him in Etan's disappearance.
Jurors are deciding 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.
"The end result is they find themselves back in the jury room and they say the only way out is a verdict. We're concerned about that," said Fishbein.
Etan's photo was one of the first to be featured on milk cartons and the day he went missing became National Missing Children's Day.
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