There were originally 3 jurors who wanted to acquit, but in the end, it was down to Sirois. The other jurors were, we're told, put great weight on something that doesn't seem to have much value as corroboration:
On [the final day of deliberation] the jurors found themselves focusing again on what many had considered one of the most damning bits of evidence against Mr. Hernandez: that he had provided physical details of a passageway on Thompson Street where he said he had dumped Etan’s body....There was a videotape of Hernandez leading the police down that passageway:
For some jurors, the tape was proof Mr. Hernandez was telling the truth. “The cops can’t implant that in his head,” Joan M. Brooks said. “Pedro was leading the walk.”But Etan's body was never found. Hernandez just seemed to know about a particular alleyway.
Defense lawyers argued that the confession, which he repeated later to a prosecutor, was a fiction made up under police pressure by a man with a low I.Q. and a personality disorder clouding his ability to tell fact from fantasy...The NYT has a second article "The Legacy of Etan Patz: Wary Children Who Became Watchful Parents." That connects the old Patz-related parental wariness to the present-day rebels of the "free-range children" movement. In fact, yesterday happened to be "Take Our Children to the Park ... and Let Them Walk Home by Themselves" Day.
Mr. Sirois acknowledged he was more skeptical than other jurors of the police handling of the interview that led to the confession, noting most of it was not recorded and that the police misrepresented some of Mr. Hernandez’s actual words in their written account of his statement. He also found compelling the expert testimony that Mr. Hernandez was susceptible to making a false confession.
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In fact, yesterday happened to be "Take Our Children to the Park ... and Let Them Walk Home by Themselves" Day.
Dropped the kids off in Yellowstone yesterday. Can't wait to see how long it takes them to make it back to New Hampshire.
Happy Mother's day wishes to Ann and all of the mothers who participate here.
May God bless you...
He thinks he's replaying 12 angry men. I'm not convinced that THAT juror got it right either.
From what I've read, the guy confessed. Is there evidence he was coerced by cops?
The continuing revelations that prosecuters weight almost all of their decissions and actions toward "winning" convictions, not so much in establishing facts, has shifted my prejudice back to the accused being innocent, and as a juror I would no longer convict on circumstantial evidence.
People in power are abusing the power and its up to the people to reclaim it. Police, prosecutors and judges have formed an evil cabal that seeks only to assert power, not deliver justice.
Headline sounds like this is about Tom Brady and the Wells Report?
I was part of a jury where the black members of the jury were engaged in jury nullification and deadlocked our jury. When it was quite clear that the guy (who happened to be black) was guilty.
The highlight was that he was pulling scams on a bunch of women giving them forged checks to cash. They all knew him as Supreme because he had a tattoo on his arm that said "supreme". And the cops got one of the women to call him and tell him to come to the house. He did, and that's where they arrested him.
But his defense was that they got the wrong guy.
The guy had a supreme tattoo on his arm and he had to know the woman enough to answer her call and come to her house.
Yet the two black jurors refused to convict unless they saw video. And even then, it would probably be doctored. My eyes opened to what goes on in jury rooms. The judge chewed us out as a jury. He said never in his court has this occurred. And afterwards all the lawyers came up to us and asked what the hell happened? They thought they had a slam dunk case.
Having seen that I have to wonder about this guy. I can't imagine he'd find him guilty over almost any circumstance. If he serves on juries often I'd love to see his record and how many times he hangs juries.
I just hope that whatever pathology that caused Hernandez to weave elaborate fantasies about killing Ethan Patz and confess those fantasies to the police does not also lead him to acting out a fantasy with some other child.
Remember the discussion on jury nullification at Althouse?
Suppose that one SJW gets to sit on every jury and have it his or her way?
This sounds like a remarkably weak case, actually. No physical evidence. No corroboration. The entire case seemed to be a confession given many years later by a mentally deficient man that says he put the body right where police were searching yet they didn't find it. I think people are going more on the horribleness of the crime than the actual evidence in this case.
No way to know about this guy. It wasn't a death penalty issue.
I don't suppose it likely that the hold out juror would give the Times an interview in which he validated the prosecution's theory, or in which he discounted the defense's arguments. It is equally unsurprising that the Times printed an interview with the NG juror, as opposed to the viewpoint of one or more of the other 11.
I would suggest it telling that he says "You can easily debunk the vast majority...", which seems to indicate there was offered some weight of evidence not mentioned in detail in the media accounts, which like to summarize, or perhaps better, prefer to opinionize.
But, of course, it makes a better story to say "Prosecutors bulldoze innocent retarded guy" rather than "Man kills boy, feels remorse, tries to tell family and friends for years. Not my job, say they"
But, in the end, the system worked like it was supposed to, in that the government failed to prove its case to all of the jurors. So either the defendant goes free or they try him again with 12 new jurors and a second chance for both sides to refine their strategies. Or they'll both decide a plea is a better idea.
The last IQ test I took had a bunch of analogies in it and stuff like which of these two-dimensional representations is of the same object as the first.
That has maybe something to do with not being an idiot, . . .
I guess, . . .
maybe, . . .
sort of.
Yes, Pedro Hernandez knew about that passageway, and, however you slice it, he had to know that passageway for some other reason than putting Etan Patz there.
(He wouldn't remember it if it is the first time he found that passageway, and he never went here again.)
More important, why was Etan Patz's body still not there, 33 years later, in 2012?
This is not a ridiculous question.
If he put it there, somebody would have found it.
Who could find it and not tell anyone?? What's the probability?
Or the probability that he hid the body in he basement of the store while the police were searching everwhere?
That story has to be a lie, or very incomplete.
And Pedro Hernandez told other versions too.
That juror focused too much on Miranda (which is not a jury question) but there are real problems with the case.
What seems beyond a reasonable doubt is:
1) Pedro Hernandez felt guilty for years, and would sometimes make unclear half-confessions about killing a child.
The confessions to the police were only the latest.
2) Pedro Hernandez worked for the store where Etan Patz was supposed to go in and buy a soda for $1.
Q. Did Pedro Hernandez know to expect him?
Q. Did Pedro Hernandez disappear for hours that day? I didn't hear anything like that.
If he didn't: (and he probably didn't)
3) Pedro Hernandez stayed at that location all day.
4) Etan Patz, alive or dead, did not.
A big question:
Q. Did Pedro Hernandez know Jose Ramos?
It is hard to believe that Pedro Hernandez acted entirely alone.
It is also hard to believe he had nothing to do with Etan Patz's disappearance.
In fact, the truth may be worse than most people are willing to think.
If, for instance, he accepted money from Jose Ramos to give him a child, or that one.
But there is also the possibility that the guilt he felt over Etan Patz could be for something very small, which, however, in his mind, was enormous.
Pedro Hernandez was not a child molester.
There's no other accusation resembling this against him.
His wife or girlfriend I am not sure what she was once discovered a picture of a small child in his possession. She was suspicious that he was the father of a child that he hadn't told her about. He said no, this was a child who had disappeared near wheer he was.
If they take a plea deal, it should be only on condition that, once and for all, Pedro Hernandez tell the truth.
Q. How will anybody know it is the truth?
A. Because, this time the story will make sense and fit with the all known facts (at least after some known facts will be shown to be wrong)
It could also make some assertions that can be corroborated.
But there is also the possibility that the guilt he felt over Etan Patz could be for something very small, which, however, in his mind, was enormous.
Yes. If he is mentally unstable, then he probably would start to fixate on the fact that he could have saved him.
Sammy Finkelman wrote:
1) Pedro Hernandez felt guilty for years, and would sometimes make unclear half-confessions about killing a child.
The confessions to the police were only the latest.
2) Pedro Hernandez worked for the store where Etan Patz was supposed to go in and buy a soda for $1.
Why then did he confess? on more than one occasion? Or feel guilty?
He works at the store where Etan was going to buy a soda.
and confesses.
Not recording the confession is a big red flag. I would have thought routine practice for NYPD
Interesting story. Without independently evaluating the evidence, the holdout has a pretty reasonable position -- the prosecution's case is built around a confession that wasn't recorded, and the defendant giving a tour of a passageway where no body was found.
Here's a thought experiment -- suppose some convict serving life imprisonment, with nothing to lose, reads this story and contacts the paper tomorrow claiming to be the real killer. They were in the area at the time and have at least a story that sounds at least as plausible as the defendant's. Would you put the new guy on trial, or stick with the guy you've got? If you're tempted to switch guys, have you really proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
A case based on a bare confession, with no real corroborating details, has an unusually high likelihood of being pure BS. The other jurors talk a lot about theories of the crime, but some crimes are never solved.
If we can have a girl that tells a national magazine she was brutally raped at a frat house (and cops too), we can certainly have a man that tells the cops he killed a kid.
The prosecution theory proposed in court was that the defendant murdered the victim, then placed the body in at least two different (nested) containers, took them through an alleyway and left them to be picked up by sanitation workers with other trash. The government made much of the details offered by the defendant in his confession, describing both the access from the basement to the street, and the exit from the basement to the alleyway where he eventually dumped the body. The government offered eyewitness testimony to the effect that the neighborhood was filled with boxes and bags of trash which were not searched by the police at the time of the disappearance. There is no mystery about why the body has not been found if the defendant's story is believed. This also explained how the defendant was able to grab the little boy and take him into the basement without anyone seeing, and then remove the body in similar secrecy. Several jurors commented on the detail offered in the confession, which matched the physical details of the real geography, as being factors arguing for the validity of that confession. This would seem to contradict media accounts of some rambling, disordered confession.
These are just some of the details heard by the jury, but not generally available in popular accounts. I wonder what else the jury heard that the rest of us are not reading about?
Does anyone really thin the NY TImes is a reliable source? How about the defense counsel? They're probably the same in this instance.
the police misrepresented some of Mr. Hernandez’s actual words in their written account of his statement
Yup. I would have made the same decision. Its tells like this that make you ask "if they would distort this, what else are they distorting?"
Works for Garage, ARM, et al too.
Damn good defense lawyer. Getting a client off after he confessed he did it is a lot harder than it sounds.
I was on a jury for a trial of a 21 yr-old guy who was clearly guilty of teaching a 3 yr-old girl how to use a vibrater and trying to get her to kiss his pee-pee. We had a hung jury because of one woman, who stated in the jury room, that she could never vote guilty, and ruin someone's life. After the mistrial, I learned that the guy had previously raped his retarded sister. The juror in question, had long gray hair, wore a granny dress, and high top basketball shoes. No lie.
Zach said... 5/10/15, 12:04 PM
Here's a thought experiment -- suppose some convict serving life imprisonment, with nothing to lose, reads this story and contacts the paper tomorrow claiming to be the real killer. They were in the area at the time
Not too many people could fit into that category.
While Jose Ranos is not known, I think, to have been there that day (he lived in the Bronx) he is an established child sexual abuser who had photographs in his possession of himself with young boys who resembled Etan Patz - not Patz himself, but it means someone like him at that age would his target.
And he was known to have been friendly with Susan Harrington, a woman who had been hired by many parents that year, including those of Etan Patz, to walk the children to school during a school bus strike.
She was also hired to house sit the weekend after Etan Patz disappeared, but that never happened.
A jailhouse informant told detectives in 1991 that Ramos told him he knew what happened to Patz, and even drew a map of Patz's school bus route, indicating that he knew that Patz's bus stop was the third one on the route.
This means that Jose Ramos could have known a lot about Etan Patz and even seen him before.
Jose Ramoos also made a semi-confession, saying he had taken aboy back to his apartment to rape him and he was 90% sure it was Etan Patz, but he had put him on a subway when he was done.
If you're tempted to switch guys, have you really proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?
They already switched guys.
In fact, in 2004, Jose Ramos had been found responsible for Patz's death in a New York civil case.
And Stan Patz used to send Ramos a copy of his son's missing child poster on his son's birthday and the anniversary of his son's disappearance with a typewritten message written on the back saying
"What did you do to my little boy?"
But now he is satisfied it was Pedro Hernandez.
Birches said... 5/10/15, 12:28 PM
If we can have a girl that tells a national magazine she was brutally raped at a frat house (and cops too), we can certainly have a man that tells the cops he killed a kid
It wasn't just the cops whom he told that. He told that, or hinted that, over the years.
There was bucketloads of reasonable doubt. A rational jury would have to acquit.
Adam Sorois stared down the even other jurors and has withstood vitriol and public outrage. Good on him.
That guy must have giant balls of steel.
It's the same bloody thing as in the Amanda Knox trial.
*there was another suspect
* the evidence for that other suspect being guilty was overwhelming
* the other suspect has already been found guilty in a different court for the crime
Yet all the prosecutors have to do is parade someone new, just not mention the "other suspect", and people believe them.
People are so stupid. And so trusting of authority figures.
>>who stated in the jury room, that she could never vote guilty, and ruin someone's life.
Then she violated her oath as a juror. I would expect that if you had reported her statement word-for-word to the judge, he would have seated the alternate.
I had a roughly similar story... I was foreman on a vehicular homicide jury. Slam dunk case: guy with a cooler of beer on the seat next to him, admitted drinking all day and then on the road all night, runs another truck off the road. Witness sees him get out and start throwing beers in to the wood. Blood test shows him at twice the legal limit two hours later in the hospital. Entire confession on tape.
One juror decides he's not guilty because we can't prove the beer caused the accident, in direct contradiction to a jury instruction.
She finally came around, but it took an hour to get her to to see reason...
No, they did mention the other suspect. That could not be omitted in an American court - most of the time, anyway. It was the core of the defense.
Plus the defense was saying he made it up. (although they were also trying to blame the police for the confession)
There are false confessions. Of that, there is no doubt. That is why police often withhold details of the crime, so they can reject false confessions.
Pedro Hernandez also had a low IQ - that is, was somewhat mentally retarded, although able to support himself and so on, and was said to have some kind of mental problems.
The problem with this being an out and out false confession, is that usually they have no connection to the crime scene, and it's done only once - not repeatedly, over years, and in circumstances that might get someone to sort of say that, like religious meeting.
There's another thing:
Pedro Hernaandez was also just about the last person who should have seen Etab Patz.
He worked irregularly in the bodega by the bus stop that Etan Patz intended to go into that day to buy a soda. His mother had given him $1.00 for that.
Also - this was actually the very first time hat Etan Pataz walked to school - or rather the school bus stop - unaccompanied by his mother.
What I don't know is how far in advance it could have been known too Pedro Hernandez that Etan Pataz would go into the bodega alone that morning.
I also don't know how long Jose ranos knew Susan Harrington. susan Harrington had walked a lot of children, including Etan Patz to school during a school bus strike. It is said Jose Ramos "dated" Susan Harrington. But his sexual orientaion was to young boys.
What I don't know is if even her getting hat job was a result of Jose Ranos's influence.
It could be he wanted to get close to someone who would get close to achld so he could kidnap him. Susan Harrington might have been one such person.
And Pedro Hernandez could have been another.
With a low-IQ he mighjt not have anticipated - well, maybe nobody would have - what his purpose was, but also, because of his low -IQ, he was used to not understanding things, so maybe he didn't ask too many questions.
But what did he do? >
Or see? (and not tell)
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