A federal jury acquitted two men of kidnapping and...

A federal jury acquitted two men of kidnapping and murdering a grocer, the first death penalty case to reach Puerto Rico in more than 75 years. After days of deliberations, the jury found Hector Acosta Martinez and Joel Rivera Alejandro innocent in the killing and kidnapping of grocer Jorge Hernandez Diaz, who was murdered and dismembered in 1998.
"It's a lesson in the sense that you have to respect the laws of a people and the constitution of a people," Acosta Martinez's attorney Hector Deliz said. "When it's said that Puerto Rico doesn't want the death penalty, the jury demonstrated that."
Prosecutors, who declined comment after the ruling, had asked for the death penalty.
The request drew criticism on this US territory where capital punishment was outlawed in 1929. Some said the jury's ruling was motivated, in part, by the island's anti-death penalty stance.
"I have no doubt the members of the jury, who may have had qualms with the death penalty, could have been influenced by their personal beliefs in reaching the verdict," Senator Kenneth McClintock said.
The two men were charged with first-degree murder and extortion. They were accused of kidnapping Hernandez Diaz the night of February 11, 1998 and demanding a $1 million ransom from his family.
When his family alerted police, prosecutors say the men killed him, hacked off his body parts and dumped them on a roadside. The case was the first of 59 cases in Puerto Rico in which federal prosecutors invoked the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act, which broadened the range of crimes punishable by death.