Maniscalco Jury Says It’s Still Deadlocked : Trial: Jurors again tell a judge that it cannot unanimously agree on a verdict. The judge may rule today on a possible mistrial.

The jury in the triple-murder trial of Thomas Maniscalco reported Monday that it “will not be able to arrive at a unanimous verdict,” raising the likelihood of a mistrial in the longest criminal case ever at the Orange County Courthouse.

A hung jury in the case filled with references to Hessian bikers, drugs and counterfeit money could mean that the 17-month, multimillion-dollar trial will have to be repeated. But Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary put off any decision on a mistrial until today.

“I just don’t know what to expect anymore,” Maniscalco said in an interview on the jury’s deadlock. “I’m grossly disappointed, but what can you say? You take it one day at a time.”

Maniscalco, 45, has maintained his innocence throughout 6 1/2 years of incarceration on the murder charges.

After 26 days of deliberations, the split among the jurors is thought to hinge on the credibility given to testimony by several alleged associates of Maniscalco who, prosecutors say, helped him in the 1980 murders of his former best friend, as well as the friend’s girlfriend and bodyguard.

The jury has given no tallies on its closed-door votes but said in a note to O’Leary Monday that there is “a wide difference separating those opinions between guilt and innocence.” This was the third and most definitive note the jury has presented in recent weeks indicating an impasse.

The jury of six women and six men Monday had been scheduled to review more trial testimony, a process started last week after the judge suggested that jurors try to break their apparent impasse. Instead, after two hours, they declined to listen to more testimony and said in their note that “further deliberation is not productive.”

“They rejected me,” a court reporter who was to have read the testimony remarked later with a laugh.

Both inside and out of O’Leary’s courtroom, lawyers for Maniscalco showed their frustration with the course set by the judge for responding to the jury’s deadlock.

O’Leary, who has made clear her desire to avoid a mistrial, ordered lawyers back to her eighth-floor courtroom at 8:30 a.m. today to decide what to do about the case.

But after Monday’s courtroom discussions, defense attorneys Joanne Harrold and Andrew Roth criticized O’Leary’s decision last week to send the jury back for further deliberations and to prolong a decision on a mistrial until today. They wanted the jury sent home Monday.

Of O’Leary’s decision last week, Harrold said: “I think it was an insult to them, to their intelligence, to say ‘go back and try again.’

“Absent someone holding a gun to their head, this jury is going to end up . . . a hung jury. The court is going to have to declare a mistrial.”

She said that continuing deliberations now could amount to “coercing” the jury into returning a verdict.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King acknowledged in court that “we have to perhaps realize the strain . . . the jurors have been under.”

Jurors were selected for the panel beginning in May, 1989, and they have been deliberating Maniscalco’s fate over the course of the last two months--for a record 26 days in the jury room. The case, which has been riddled with legal obstacles, is expected to cost taxpayers millions by the time it’s over.

King, noting the unusual length and difficulty of the case, said in an interview: “If there’s hope we can get a verdict, we’ll go ahead and proceed. . . . We should do everything humanly, reasonably possible to obtain a verdict.”

He rejected the defense team’s criticism of O’Leary’s handling of the deadlock, saying the judge “has done an incredible job of trying to save a verdict.”

A lawyer himself, Maniscalco faces the death penalty if convicted on three counts of murder for allegedly orchestrating the killing of three people in a Westminster tract house over the Memorial Day weekend in 1980. Found dead 10 days later were his longtime friend, Richard (Rabbit) Rizzone, 36, who had helped him form the Hessian biker gang during the Vietnam War, as well as Rizzone’s bodyguard, Thomas Monahan, 28, and girlfriend, Rena Miley, 19.

Prosecutors allege that the trio’s execution-style murders stemmed from a feud between Maniscalco and Rizzone over drugs and counterfeit money.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright said his office will try the case again if a mistrial is declared. Prosecutor King declined to address that issue, but Maniscalco’s family presumes the worst for him.

“I don’t think my brother will be able to come home any time soon now, which is obviously upsetting,” Ann Maniscalco said after the note from the jury was read Monday. “I just don’t think the D.A. will let up on him.”