Mistrial Declared in Molestation Case : Courts: Jury deadlocks 10 to 2 in favor of acquitting first-grade teacher accused of fondling 11 students. A hearing on a possible retrial has been set.

A Superior Court jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of acquitting a first-grade teacher charged with sexually molesting students, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial in the case Wednesday.

After eight days of deliberations, the jurors told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Beauford H. Phelps that they could not reach a verdict in the trial of teacher Louis Moreno on 24 counts of committing lewd acts. Last week, the panel acquitted Moreno on six counts.

Moreno, 49, of Baldwin Park had been accused of fondling 11 girls in his classroom at 96th Street Elementary School. The acts allegedly occurred over a three-year period, after Moreno joined the Los Angeles Unified School District as a teacher in the fall of 1988.

During the six-week trial, 17 youngsters testified that Moreno had touched them under their clothes while other students were not in a position to see. One girl testified that she was molested after the lunch recess when other students had their heads down on their desks.

But jurors apparently did not trust the children’s testimony, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Barry Gale.

“I spoke to the jurors and they wanted more than what the children said,” Gale said. “They wanted medical evidence, and there wasn’t any medical evidence. This was fondling. . . . They (the jurors) were afraid; they wanted corroboration to what the children were saying.”

Moreno’s attorney, George Hernandez, however, said the youngsters told inconsistent stories. Hernandez praised the jury for not succumbing to what he called “a natural tendency to want to believe the kids. What this jury did, to their credit, was not to be overwhelmed by the sheer number (of child witnesses) but to analyze each and every count.”

It is up to prosecutors to decide whether to seek a retrial for Moreno, who will remain in jail on $500,000 bail until a hearing Aug. 5. A hearing on the retrial is set for Aug. 19.

Moreno became the subject of an investigation last June after two of his students complained that they had been molested. The first girl complained to school officials in January, but authorities said at that time that they could find no corroboration of her complaint. The student was transferred to another class and Moreno continued teaching.

In June, when the second child complained, Moreno was removed from the classroom and put on administrative leave. He was arrested in October.