Jury deadlocks in case of Rwandan immigrant accused of genocide

With the jury unable to reach a verdict, a judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a Rwandan-born woman who was charged with covering up her role in that country’s 1994 genocide in order to obtain U.S. citizenship.

The trial of Beatrice Munyenyezi in Concord, N.H., had been closely watched because she was only the second Rwandan immigrant to stand trial in the United States on charges of lying on immigration applications about whether they participated in the killings of more than half a million people in the central African nation. Chief U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe declared a mistrial Thursday afternoon after jurors told him they were at an impasse following nearly 19 hours of deliberations over several days.

“Sometimes no decision is the right decision, and perhaps that is the answer here,” McAuliffe said, according to the Concord Monitor. Prosecutors did not comment as they left the courtroom, but defense attorney David Ruoff said he expected Munyenyezi, 42, to be tried again.

“I think they’re understandably disappointed,” Ruoff said of prosecutors, the Associated Press reported. “You think you have a good case and you can’t convince 12 strangers you’re right.” He described Munyenyezi, who did not testify during the 12-day trial, as confused by the outcome. “She didn’t quite know how to interpret it,” Ruoff said. “We told her we beat substantial odds by hanging the jury.”

Munyenyezi, who has three teenage daughters, came to the United States in 1998 and became a citizen in 2003, settling into an apparently law-abiding and uneventful life in Manchester, N.H. That changed in June 2010 when she was arrested and charged with lying on immigration forms in order to win U.S. citizenship.

During the trial, prosecutors produced witnesses from Rwanda who testified that Munyenyezi was a Hutu extremist who helped orchestrate the rapes and killings of moderate Hutus and Tutsis at a roadblock near her home in Rwanda in 1994.

Munyenyezi did not testify, but she always maintained her innocence. She also had testified in defense of her husband, who was convicted of genocide and rape by a special tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and sentenced to life in prison last June.

The only other Rwandan immigrant to face the same charges as Munyenyezi was Lazare Kobagaya, who went free last year after a jury in Kansas was unable to reach a verdict.

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