MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Jury selection began Monday in the retrial of Pedro Hernandez, the former SoHo bodega worker accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in May 1979, on the day the young boy walked alone to his school bus stop for the first time.
Hernandez's first trial ended in a hung jury last year, after 18 days of deliberations, when a lone holdout juror refused to convict the 55-year-old New Jersey man in the boy’s death.
Defense attorneys argue that Hernandez, a father of three with no prior criminal record, is a mentally feeble man who suffers from delusions.
Hernandez was arrested in 2012, and confessed to strangling Etan in the basement of a Prince Street bodega near the boy's school bus stop.
Hernandez's lawyers say the confessions were coerced and made under duress, and place the blame on another man, Jose Ramos, who is currently in jail for molesting boys in Pennsylvania.
Patz's family has said, after sitting through the first trial, that they are convinced Hernandez is the killer.
Etan, whose disappearance in 1979 stirred the nation, has never been found.
Jury selection may take upwards of a month.
Hernandez has remained in prison since his 2012 arrest.
