In Etan Patz Mistrial, a Latter-Day Henry Fonda

By Jesse Wegman The New York Times May 11, 2015

Adam Sirois.Credit Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press

It is impossible to read the fascinating personal account of Adam Sirois, the lone holdout juror in last week’s mistrial in the long-awaited Etan Patz murder prosecution, and not think of Juror No. 8 — better known as Henry Fonda.

Mr. Fonda, of course, was the star of “Twelve Angry Men,” the 1957 film that portrayed the complicated, contradictory dynamics of the jury room more compellingly and with greater psychological accuracy than any before or since. (The screenplay was written by Reginald Rose, based on his own experiences as a juror.)

If for some reason you have not seen it, stop reading right now and go watch. It’s barely more than 90 minutes long, and you will never approach jury duty the same way again.

But if you need the quick version: It’s the story of a sweltering summer evening in a New York City jury deliberation room, where twelve men are deciding whether to convict (and sentence to death) a young man for the murder of his father. It portrays the dogged efforts of one juror to stay true to the facts of the case, the judge’s instructions, and the Constitution.

Spoiler alert: Justice wins. Mr. Fonda’s holdout starts out as the sole vote not to convict. One by one, he convinces the other 11 to come to his side. That’s not quite what happened last week in Manhattan criminal court, where Pedro Hernandez was on trial for the 1979 murder of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy who disappeared on his walk to school — the first time his parents had let him attempt the walk alone. His body was never found.

It is a devastating, unimaginable tragedy, and for more than three decades it has remained one of New York’s most confounding mysteries. Etan’s parents, Stanley and Julie Patz, have bravely endured the scrutiny of the media and the rest of the country as they are forced to relive their child’s disappearance over and over with each new revelation.

But their suffering, as real and horrible as it is, is a different matter from whether or not Mr. Hernandez is in fact guilty of killing Etan, as prosecutors — and 11 jurors — believe he is.

Mr. Sirois disagreed. His longest explanation to date, which he gave in a 45-minute interview published in today’s New York Post, should be required reading for all potential jurors in criminal cases throughout the country. It is one of the most insightful, articulate and self-aware treatises from the inside of this complex American institution, as well as an object lesson in the proper way to approach the juror’s unique role. And it is all the more remarkable for coming in such a high-profile, emotionally anguishing case.

“I knew that I would start from the presumption of innocence,” Mr. Sirois’s account begins. “I knew that because we are told we should start from that presumption.”

This is exactly the right attitude — indeed it is necessary to uphold the central feature of the American criminal justice system. And yet, Mr. Sirois said, several jurors “came in thinking he was guilty right off the bat.”

It was clear from the start, he said, that “some people were never going to change their vote. I wasn’t one of those. Although I’m sure some of my fellow jurors would say I was, but I wasn’t.”

Mr. Sirois freely admits that he experienced moments throughout the trial where he was certain of either Mr. Hernandez’s guilt or his innocence. For example, he pointed to Mr. Hernandez’s “chilling” videotaped confession: If that had been the only evidence, he said, it would have been hard to acquit. “But we’re told we are not supposed to judge a person only on his own words,” Mr. Sirois told the Post.

He explained his concerns over various pieces of evidence the prosecution presented, over the existence of another possible and long-rumored suspect, and over the question of Mr. Hernandez’s mental health, which raised the possibility of a false confession. False confessions are far more common than most people realize, and Mr. Sirois, who has a background in public health but not mental health, said he was asked to explain to the other jurors how someone could possibly confess to a crime he did not commit. In the end, he said, “A lot of the things you have to believe for Pedro to be guilty just don’t add up.”

Mr. Sirois was not able to do what Mr. Fonda’s character did, and actually convince eleven other jurors to vote to acquit. In fact, according to the jurors’ own reports of their deliberations, he lost jurors along the way. But Mr. Sirois did the harder thing, which was to hold to his principles against what was surely intense psychological and emotional pressure to vote guilty.

In New York, as in 47 other states, that was enough by itself to stop the conviction. (Had the trial been held in Louisiana or Oregon, the only two states that allow nonunanimous jury verdicts, Mr. Hernandez would have been convicted.)

Being a juror in a murder case is one of the harder things American citizens are called on to do, and it’s easy to roll your eyes and make jokes about talking your way out of jury duty. But through his actions in the jury room and his later explanations, Mr. Sirois showed how important it is.

He understood that the job of the twelve people who spent 100 hours deliberating in that room was to decide not exactly what happened to Etan Patz on May 25, 1979, but whether the prosecution had met its burden of proof against Mr. Hernandez.

“I’m not absolutely sure that it’s not Pedro Hernandez,” he said. “But that’s [not] how our legal system works.”