MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Former jurors in the Etan Patz murder mistrial were back in court Wednesday to support a retrial and vent their frustration at the lone holdout juror.
"Pedro Hernandez needs to pay for what he did," former juror Aliaa Dahan said, referring to the former bodega worker who confessed to strangling the 6-year-old boy in a SoHo basement 35 years ago.
Jennifer O'Connor, who also served on the panel, told reporters that she and five other jurors, and two alternates, who attended the scheduling hearing, were in court for the first hearing related to Hernandez's retrial to "support [Stan Patz] and his family."
After more than three months and 18 days of deliberations, the case against Hernandez, 54, ended on May 8 in a mistrial when juror Adam Sirios could not be persuaded to vote guilty.
Hernandez sat quietly through the brief hearing. Etan's father, Stan Patz, who has been a vocal supporter of a retrial, sat through the court appearance, but declined to talk to reporters.
Sirios, also came to hearing, but was clearly not in communication with the other jurors.
He said he came to court because he was "still invested" in the case he said he planned to attend the retrial.
Though Sirios has said deliberations were not contentious, the tension between the former jurors was on display Thursday.
Dahan said she blamed Sirios for his not guilty vote.
"One holdout had a very big ego and a very small heart," she said, as Sirios stood steps away.
Hernandez admitted to killing the boy in 2012, but his defense team had argued that the father of three from New Jersey suffered from delusions and that his confession was false.
Hernandez, who had no prior criminal record, has been in jail since 2012.
