"You can easily debunk the vast majority of the evidence that was presented in the case, I would say all of the evidence."

Said Adam Sirois, the lone holdout after 18 days of deliberation in the Etan Patz murder case. "There was no real firm, corroborating evidence" for the confession by the defendant Pedro Hernandez," he said, quoted in a decently detailed NYT article.

There were originally 3 jurors who wanted to acquit, but in the end, it was down to Sirois. The other jurors were, we're told, put great weight on something that doesn't seem to have much value as corroboration:

On [the final day of deliberation] the jurors found themselves focusing again on what many had considered one of the most damning bits of evidence against Mr. Hernandez: that he had provided physical details of a passageway on Thompson Street where he said he had dumped Etan�s body....

There was a videotape of Hernandez leading the police down that passageway:

For some jurors, the tape was proof Mr. Hernandez was telling the truth. �The cops can�t implant that in his head,� Joan M. Brooks said. �Pedro was leading the walk.�

But Etan's body was never found. Hernandez just seemed to know about a particular alleyway.

Defense lawyers argued that the confession, which he repeated later to a prosecutor, was a fiction made up under police pressure by a man with a low I.Q. and a personality disorder clouding his ability to tell fact from fantasy...

Mr. Sirois acknowledged he was more skeptical than other jurors of the police handling of the interview that led to the confession, noting most of it was not recorded and that the police misrepresented some of Mr. Hernandez�s actual words in their written account of his statement. He also found compelling the expert testimony that Mr. Hernandez was susceptible to making a false confession.

The NYT has a second article "The Legacy of Etan Patz: Wary Children Who Became Watchful Parents." That connects the old Patz-related parental wariness to the present-day rebels of the "free-range children" movement. In fact, yesterday happened to be "Take Our Children to the Park ... and Let Them Walk Home by Themselves" Day.