NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 16, 2015 at

TRENTON — Jurors in the trial of a Lakewood rabbi accused of arranging the kidnapping and torture of husbands to extract religious divorces completed their first full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict on Thursday.

In deciding the fate of Rabbi Mendel Epstein and three others, jurors briefly interrupted their deliberations to ask two questions of U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson in Trenton, but ultimately did not come to a conclusion.

Epstein, a prominent rabbi who specializes in divorce proceedings, is on trial along with his son, David “Ari” Epstein, and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein, on conspiracy and kidnapping charges that grew out of a federal undercover sting.

A couple hours into their deliberations, jurors sent a note asking whether knowledge of someone’s confinement against his…