STUART — A Martin County jury ended a full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict Friday in the trial surrounding Martin Memorial Medical Center’s 2003 private deportation of a brain-damaged Guatemalan patient.

A judge’s ruling allowed hospital officials to deport Luis Alberto Jimenez, but the ruling was later overturned on appeal and attorneys for Jimenez’s legal guardian Montejo Gaspar said hospital officials acted unreasonably by secretly taking him back to Guatemala knowing Gaspar’s attorney’s were trying to stay the judge’s order.

Jimenez was eventually kicked out of hospitals in Guatemala and now lives in a remote village with little medical care.

The jury, which will continue deliberations Monday, could either decide hospital officials acted fairly or force them to pay for Jimenez’s care as well as punitive damage.

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