Jury selection under way in Morristown boy's murder
Most potential jurors dismissed, many for strong feelings on case
By Peggy Wright • Daily Record • September 9, 2008


Just two out of 90 people screened Monday on the first day of jury selection for the trial of accused child-killer Porfirio S. Jimenez were qualified as potential jurors for Morris County's oldest pending criminal case.


Eighty-eight men and women were excused for either hardship reasons or because they had strong feelings about the nature of the charges against the former day laborer who is accused of trying to rape 10-year-old Walter Contreras Valenzuela and then beating and stabbing him to death with a garden tool in Morristown on May 20, 2001.

Two men survived the first day of jury selection, and they will be part of a pre-qualified pool from which the final jury will be selected. That is, if one of the men gets a guarantee from his employer that he will be paid if he gets on the jury.

The process is expected to take one month and the trial itself will last about six weeks. Ninety more potential jurors will be screened today.

Dressed in street clothes for the first time since his arrest in June 2001, Jimenez sat quietly at the defense table while two interpreters alternated translating the court proceedings for him from English to Spanish.

Jimenez, 43, was linked through DNA tests to the boy's killing in a secluded area on the banks of the Whippany River off Cory Road. He then gave detectives a confession, which Superior Court Judge Salem Vincent Ahto has ruled can be used against him at trial. He admitted that he felt lust for the child he met at the Abbett Avenue playground the day of the slaying and then killed him to prevent Walter from telling on him.

Defense attorney Dolores Mann last week got permission from Ahto to pursue defense strategies that Jimenez was either insane or suffered "diminished capacity" at the time of the killing. She has said that, despite the evidence, Jimenez flat-out denies murdering the boy.

If the jury accepts an insanity defense, Jimenez would be found not guilty by reason of insanity and potentially ordered to undergo treatment at a psychiatric hospital. With a diminished capacity defense, a person can be found guilty of a lesser form of homicide than murder because they suffered a mental disease or defect at the time.

Jurors are being asked the standard questions of whether they can abide by the judge's legal instructions and decide the case fairly and impartially, but also are being asked whether the Hispanic ethnicity of the defendant and victim might affect their ability to serve. They also are being asked whether the mention of alcohol or marijuana use during the trial might have an impact on their ability to fairly assess the facts.

According to court documents, Jimenez had a tendency to drink excessively at times and one witness has told authorities that Jimenez smoked marijuana. The suspect was born in Honduras and came to this country illegally to live with his brother in Morristown, leaving behind a common-law wife and three children in his native country.

Peggy Wright can be reached at (973)267-1142 or pwright@gannett.com.


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