Judge tells jury to keep deliberating
On its third day of deliberation in the Juan Rivera murder trial, the jurors tried to give up on reaching a verdict.
Around 2 p.m. Thursday, Lake County Circuit Judge Christopher Starck told the attorneys in the case they had deadlocked.
"We have a hung jury," Starck said a note he received from the jury read. "Please advise us of the next step."
Juries do not declare themselves deadlocked. That is a decision made by the judge on his own initiative or by motion of the attorneys.
Starck decided the jurors' next step would be much like the one they had taken about 4 p.m. Tuesday, when they first received the case at the close of the trial. He told the seven women and five men to try to reach a verdict.
They did go back to work, and deliberated another seven hours before contacting Starck and requesting permission to go home for the night without any mention of a continuing deadlock.
Starck agreed, and released them just before 9 p.m., after a total of 25 hours of deliberation.
It was the fourth day of the fourth week of Rivera's third trial for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker of Waukegan. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison after trials in 1993 and 1998, but new trials were ordered after each conviction.
The jury had deliberated about 211/2 hours over the three days at the time the note about the deadlock was written.
It was not the first time Starck had seen such a note in a Rivera trial. In 1998, the jury of seven men and five women declared itself in "a state of serious impasse" after 18 hours of deliberation over two days. In that case, Starck instructed the jurors to continue deliberating.
The next day, after another such note following a total of 30 hours of deliberation, Starck read the jury a special instruction to do whatever they could to reach a verdict.
After being sequestered for the night, the jury returned to the courthouse for a fourth day of deliberation and convicted Rivera after six more hours of discussion.
On Thursday, the attorneys on both sides of the case agreed with Starck that it was too soon to give the special instruction. Instead, he sent a reply that he said was "neither flip nor uncaring," but instructed jurors to continue working toward a verdict.
"The court is in receipt of your note," Starck said his reply read. "You have been working diligently in this process. Please continue your deliberations."