In a significant legal development, a federal judge in New York has ordered a retrial for Pedro Hernandez, the man previously convicted for the 1979 murder of Etan Patz, highlighting a potential reopening of a case that has haunted New York City for decades. If the retrial does not proceed, Hernandez could be released from custody.

According to a report from FOX News Digital, Judge Colleen McMahon of Manhattan’s federal district court ruled on Thursday that Hernandez, now 64, must face a new trial by June 2026. This decision follows his 2017 conviction for the murder of the six-year-old boy, a case that captured national attention.

Hernandez’s 2017 trial has come under scrutiny. As previously noted by CrimeOnline, a panel of three judges determined that there were errors in the jury instructions given during the trial, specifically concerning how they were to consider Hernandez’s confession.

During deliberations in his second trial, the jury sent multiple notes to the judge seeking clarification on the handling of Hernandez’s statements. One critical note requested guidance on whether they should disregard later confessions if they found his initial, un-Mirandized confession to be involuntary. This included confessions made on videotape at both the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

“When deliberating during his second trial, the jury sent the judge three different notes about Hernandez’s confessions,” an order in July detailed.

“The third note asked the trial court to ‘explain’ whether, if the jury found that Hernandez’s un-Mirandized confession ‘was not voluntary,’ it ‘must disregard’ the later confessions, including the videotaped confessions at the local Camden County Prosecutor’s Office (‘CCPO’) and the Manhattan District Attorney’s (‘DA’s’) Office.”

Along with flawed jury instruction, the appeal claimed that there were also issues with police interrogation and Hernandez’s mental health.

In return, prosecutors requested 90 days to determine whether they will retry Hernandez. The defense asked for the decision to be made within a month.

McMahon noted the challenges the prosecution will face to locate “dozens of long-scattered witnesses who testified at the last trial some seven years ago.”

She also noted that the prosecution is asking for the Supreme Court to review the appeals decision.

“It is not my job to read the tea leaves and make predictions or estimates about when or how the Supreme Court will act on any petition for certiorari that may be filed,” McMahon wrote.

Etan Patz Disappearance and Murder

Hernandez, an 18-year-old bodega clerk at the time, confessed in 2012 to strangling Etan inside the store’s basement.

Hernandez reportedly said he lured Etan from a school bus stop in New York City by promising him a soda. After the murder, he hid the child’s body in an alley.

Etan had been waiting by the bus stop on May 25, 1979, the first day of school, after walking from his home that morning, when he vanished.

He told his mother, Julie, that he wanted to walk alone. She later told police that she watched him from their apartment window as he crossed Wooster Street in Manhattan’s SoHo area.

Etan never made it to school and didn’t return home. His remains have never been found, and no forensic evidence has linked Hernandez to the crime.

“That was the last time I saw him. I watched him walk one block away,” Julie Patz testified during Hernandez’s murder trial. “I turned around and went back upstairs and that was the last time.”

Police initially arrested Hernandez for second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping in 2012, but his first trial in 2015 ended with a hung jury.

In 2017, a jury deliberated for nine days before convicting him of both crimes.

Hernandez’s attorneys claimed he was mentally ill and that he only issued a confession after seven hours of police questioning. They also said he had difficulties separating fiction from reality.

Check back for updates.

[Feature Photo: FILE – This May 28, 2012, file photo shows a newspaper with a photograph of Etan Patz at a makeshift memorial in the SoHo neighborhood of New York where Patz lived before his disappearance on May 25, 1979. The memorial was set up near a building that housed a convenience store where Pedro Hernandez, accused of killing Patz, told police 33 years after they boy’s disappearance, that he choked the 6-year-old and put the still-living boy into a plastic bag, boxed up the bag and left it on a street. Opening statements in Hernandez’s trial are set for Friday, Jan. 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)]