ETAN PATZ - 6 yo (1979) - Manhattan/NYC NY

Taped confession by suspected Etan Patz killer can be used against him at trial, judge rules

Pedro Hernandez admitted to police that he killed 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, but Hernandez’s attorney says a jury will determine if it was a reliable confession. Patz’s body has never been found.

BY Shayna Jacobs
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, November 24, 2014, 12:20 PM

Pool
Pedro Hernandez (center) admitted in 2012 to killing Etan Patz but has not yet been brought to trial.

A bodega worker’s confession that he murdered 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 can be used against him at trial, a Manhattan judge ruled Monday.

In the chilling — and lengthy — admission, Pedro Hernandez, 53, described how he violently attacked the small boy after luring him into a SoHo bodega with the promise of a soda.

Etan Patz disappeared in 1979 and was the first missing person to be printed on the side of a milk carton.

“I did it. It should never have happened,” he told investigators in a videotaped interview in 2012. “I started choking him. He wasn't dead. He was still gasping.”

The defense motion to suppress the statements was formally denied by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley in a written decision filed Monday.

Lawyers for Hernandez argued that the mentally ill man with a low IQ was guided and coached into making the admissions by detectives who gained his trust.

Prosecutors argued the statements were given voluntarily on May 23 and May 24, 2012, first at the Maple Shade Police Department near Hernandez's home in New Jersey and again at the Manhattan District Attorney's office early the next day.

In the decision, Wiley rejected the argument that Hernandez should have been read his Miranda rights sooner than he was because he was apparently in custody and talking to cops for at least six hours before the rights were read.

Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News
Etan Patz’s father Stanley (center, in blue shirt) arrives at Manhattan Supreme Court Monday.

Wiley said that “a reasonable person in the defendant's position, innocent of any crime, would not have thought he was in custody... The defendant was never handcuffed or in any way physically restrained.”

He also sided with the prosecution in deciding that there was a “knowing and intelligent” waiver of Hernandez's Miranda rights, once they were read.

Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News
Harvey Fishbein, the lawyer for Pedro Hernandez, said a jury still needs to decide if the confessions can be trusted.

Hernandez's attorney, Harvey Fishbein, said after court that while the confessions are admissible, a jury must decide if they are reliable.

“We've been looking forward for 2 1/2 years to finally get before a fair and impartial jury and to finally end this prosecution,” he said.

“I think anyone who sees these confessions will understand that when the police were finished with him Mr. Hernandez believed he had killed Etan Patz, but that doesn't mean that he actually did. And that's the whole point of this case. It has been the point of this case for 2 1/2 years.”

Defense lawyers have said there’s no physical evidence tying their client to Etan’s murder.

The remains of the missing boy - the first to ever be pictured on a milk carton - have never been found.

A different man, convicted pedophile Jose Ramos, was found responsible for causing Etan’s “wrongful death” in a civil suit brought by the boy’s parents.

Hernandez’s lawyers have said they plan to call him as a defense witness, and may present evidence that he’s the real killer.

The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5 in Manhattan Supreme Court.


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/confession-suspect-etan-patz-murder-judge-article-1.2021766

Jurors Ask For List Of Witnesses, Exhibits During 6th Day Of Deliberations In Etan Patz Murder Trial

April 22, 2015 1:56 PM

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The jury in the trial of the man accused of killing Etan Patz resumed deliberations Wednesday.

Jurors asked for a list of witnesses, exhibits and agreements that both sides made on matters of evidence, 1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reported.

Jurors wrapped up a fifth day of deliberations Tuesday without reaching a verdict.

They had asked for clarifications on the law surrounding confessions. The panel of seven men and five women also listened to testimony from two psychiatrists who evaluated the defendant.

Pedro Hernandez confessed to killing the 6-year-old boy in SoHo in May 1979. He said he lured Patz into a bodega basement and strangled him.

The defense says Hernandez is mentally ill and made up the story.

The jury worked to look for corroborations of Hernandez’s story. The judge explained that a defendant cannot be convicted on his words alone and that the jury has to find additional evidence that the crimes charged actually occurred, WCBS 880’s Irene Cornell reported.

Jurors 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 to be featured on milk cartons and the day he went missing became National Missing Children’s Day.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/22/etan-patz-trial-deliberations-day-6/

Judge Declares Mistrial in Etan Patz Case After Jury Divided 11-to-1

Brendan O'Connor
5/10/15 3:30pm

On Friday, after 18 days of jury deliberation, Justice Maxwell Wiley, the judge in the Etan Patz case, declared a mistrial. In the end, the jury was divided 11 to one. “I wanted to force people to think,” Adam Sirois, the lone holdout, told the New York Post. “Myself included.”

In 2012, Pedro Hernandez, 54, confessed—initially to police and again to prosecutors—to killing Etan Patz. The confession came 33 years after the boy’s unsolved disappearance. Defense attorneys argued that the confession was a false one exacted from a man with a low I.Q. and a personality disorder.

The New York Times reports that, on Friday, before the mistrial was declared, the jurors returned (again) to the physical description Hernandez had given of the Thompson Street passageway where he said he dumped Etan’s body:

While 11 jurors saw the passageway descriptions as bolstering Mr. Hernandez’s confession, the 12th, according to accounts provided by several people present, thought there could be an innocuous reason for the detailed memories.

“That is when we knew it was over,” said one juror, Christopher Giliberti. “He had a verdict that he wanted to reach and it was agnostic of the evidence.”

Adam Sirois, the twelfth juror who refused to convict, granted a long interview to the New York Post. “I introduced some very reasonable hypotheses,” he told the Post. “I also put in some stories like, ‘What if this could have happened?’”

“He would come up with theories that the defense didn’t even bring up,” the jury’s forewoman, Alia Dahhan, said.

“I tried to do as best I could. I was often at the white board trying to explain how this could have happened,” Sirois said, referring to the possibility of a false confession.

“People thanked me. Almost everyone thanked me, for not forcing them, but getting them to think a little differently about the case. A little bit differently about different facts, about what story could have happened, talking about other hypotheses.”

According to Sirois, after the first vote the jury was split 8-4 in favor of conviction, then 9-3, 10-2, and, on Friday, 11-1.

“I wish that I could have come up with more, said more, done more,” another juror, Jennifer O’Connor, told the Times.

http://gawker.com/judge-declares-mistrial-in-etan-patz-case-after-jury-di-1703467660

Prosecutors plan to retry Hernandez in Etan Patz case

By Jamie Schram, Larry Celona and Rebecca Rosenberg
May 11, 2015 | 4:57am

Manhattan prosecutors plan to retry the man accused of kidnapping and murdering Etan Patz — using what they learned from the lone holdout juror who caused a mistrial in the case on Friday to try to nail him the second time around, sources told The Post.

Rogue juror Adam Sirois has said he wasn’t convinced the 6-year-old Soho boy wasn’t killed by another man — a convicted pedophile — and insisted that disturbed suspect Pedro Hernandez’s confession may have been made up.

“I understand that the case will be retried,” a law-enforcement source familiar with the case said Sunday.

“Those handling the case are convinced beyond any doubt of the defendant’s guilt, and justice needs to be done.”

The determined prosecutors — who steered jurors through four months of testimony before the panel deadlocked 11-1 on Friday after 17 days of deliberations — will attack the case basically the same way, with a few minor adjustments, sources said.

Among the strategy-session topics will be the reasons Sirois gave for adamantly refusing to join the 11 other jurors who were set to convict Hernandez of kidnapping and murdering little Etan, who was abducted from the street and killed the first time he walked by himself to catch a school bus in 1979.

Sirois said Hernandez’s mental-health issues could have led him to give cops a false confession. He said it also bothered him that investigators and prosecutors never produced the “bag” that Etan was disposed in, or any other evidence corroborating Hernandez’s tale.

Sirois explained he wasn’t convinced that another suspect, Jose Ramos — who was found liable for Etan’s disappearance at a civil trial — is completely out of the picture, either.

Prosecutors are expected to address those concerns during a retrial, the sources said.

“The basic strategy will be the same, although, in cases of retrial, there is always a hope to tweak for the better,” the source said. “In this case, comments of the lone dissenter may prove helpful.”

Another source added, “They spent a lot of time and money, and put a lot of effort into this. They would like a win. They could really use a win.”

Patz’s dad, Stanley, who was once completely convinced Ramos was behind his boy’s kidnapping and murder, believes now more than ever that Hernandez is guilty because of “the evidence,” the source said.

For years, Stanley Patz, on the anniversaries of Etan’s birthday and disappearance, would send Ramos a copy of his son’s missing-child poster.

On the back, he typed the same message each time: “What did you do to my little boy?”

Ramos has denied being involved in the boy’s disappearance.

http://nypost.com/2015/05/11/prosecutors-plan-to-retry-hernandez-in-etan-patz-case/