Mistrial Declared in Murder Case Against Farm Worker : Courts: Jurors vote 11-1 to convict a woman accused of killing her infant son. A hearing on a new trial is scheduled.

A juror who held out for acquittal forced a mistrial Friday in the murder case of a farm worker accused of killing her infant son last summer.

Francisca Sanchez Jimenez, 23, was accused of murdering her infant son, known as Baby Boy Sanchez, by dumping him in a portable toilet last summer, and of trying to murder another newborn son 14 months earlier.

Although the Ventura County Superior Court jurors voted 11 to 1 for conviction on the murder charge, the split was 9 to 3 for acquittal on the attempted-murder count, according to a juror who told The Times she favored conviction on both charges.

Before accepting the jury’s unanimous view that it was hopelessly deadlocked on the charges, Judge Lynn D. Compton disclosed in court that one of the jurors, whom he did not identify, had sent him a note complaining about the juror who held out for acquittal on the murder charge.

According to the judge, the note faulted the holdout juror for neglecting to state during jury selection that she had a family member with unspecified mental problems.

For a juror to have such a background could be relevant because part of Jimenez’s defense was that she was “borderline mentally retarded,” in the words of one defense psychologist. Asst. Public Defender Jean L. Farley had argued that the unsophisticated, illiterate Jimenez did not realize that she had given birth in the portable toilet or that the baby had fallen into the tank’s wastes and chemicals, where he asphyxiated.

“One juror obviously deceived us,” Compton said after showing the note to Farley and Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol J. Nelson. But Farley told the judge that the jurors were not specifically asked about mental illness or retardation in their families, and Nelson agreed that there did not appear to be any juror misconduct.

Compton scheduled a hearing Tuesday at which Judge Steven Z. Perren will decide whether to set a new trial for Jimenez. Even if Perren dismisses one or both of the charges--which would be an unusual move--the district attorney’s office could refile them.

Nelson could not be reached for comment after the mistrial was declared. But Farley said she was “very thankful to the one juror who did not succumb to what must have been unbelievable pressure” to change her vote to guilty.

Farley said she does not think her client got a fair trial in front of Compton, a retired appeals court judge who was on temporary assignment in Ventura County. “In my 13 years as an attorney, I have never been treated with such disrespect,” Farley said.

The Spanish-speaking Jimenez, who has followed all the proceedings through a court interpreter, showed no reaction to the jury’s failure to reach verdicts. She remains in County Jail with bail set at $250,000. Farley said she does not believe that Jimenez understood what happened Friday.

After a three-week trial, the jury spent about seven days deliberating and having testimony read back.

Prosecutor Nelson presented witnesses who said that in May, 1990, they found Jimenez in the bathroom of their Oxnard home, trying to push a newborn baby down a flush toilet.

But Farley questioned why the witnesses, if they thought Jimenez intended to kill the child, did not tell authorities at the time.

She told the jurors that Jimenez had given birth unexpectedly, that the baby had fallen into the flush toilet, and that the witnesses entered the bathroom before the weakened Jimenez had a chance to pull the boy out. That child is now in a foster home.

“The facts were not overwhelming” in the attempted-murder case, said the juror who agreed to be interviewed by The Times. But that juror said she strongly believed that Jimenez intended to kill Baby Boy Sanchez, who was born last July 28 in an outhouse in Saticoy.

Farley presented medical experts who said it was possible that the baby was delivered so quickly that Jimenez did not realize she had given birth. In an interview with investigators after her arrest, Jimenez said she had passed “a ball of blood” while in the portable toilet.

The county medical examiner, however, said lung tissue indicated that the baby breathed for as much as a minute and probably cried before expiring. Nelson said in her closing argument that Jimenez twice gave birth to children she did not want and twice tried to dispose of them in a toilet.

“I had a very hard time believing” the defense scenario of the second baby’s demise, the juror said. By Thursday, she said, all but the one holdout juror agreed that Jimenez was guilty of murder, although they never got to the issue of whether it was premeditated, or first-degree, murder.

The juror said she was not the one who sent Compton the note, but she agreed that the holdout juror had strong feelings about mental retardation and the ability of mentally impaired people to form criminal intent.

Soon after deliberations began, the holdout juror “said she had a mentally retarded relative,” said the juror interviewed by The Times. “She thought this woman could not intend to commit a murder because of her mental problems . . . .

“We did not want to be a hung jury, not at all,” the juror continued, adding that she believes prosecutors should retry the case. “I feel they could get guilty verdicts.”