Prosecutors in New York City are advocating for the reinstatement of a murder conviction related to the 1979 disappearance and death of Etan Patz.
According to CBS News, their efforts focus on urging the Supreme Court to restore Pedro Hernandez’s conviction, even as they prepare for the possibility of a retrial.
In a recent turn of events, a federal appeals court overturned the murder verdict in July. By October, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals had determined that Hernandez should either face a new trial or be released due to flawed jury instructions.
A panel of three judges concluded that the instructions provided by the New York judge during Hernandez’s 2017 trial were improper, specifically regarding the handling of Hernandez’s confession.
During deliberations in the second trial, jurors reached out to the judge with three separate notes concerning Hernandez’s confessions, the July order revealed.
In one significant note, jurors requested the trial court to clarify if they needed to disregard subsequent confessions, such as the videotaped ones at the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, if they found the initial un-Mirandized confession involuntary.
Along with flawed jury instruction, the appeal claimed that there were also issues with police interrogation and Hernandez’s mental health.
Hernandez’s attorneys claimed he was mentally ill and that he only issued a confession after seven hours of police questioning.
In November, the prosecution decided to retry Hernandez for the third time, CNN reports. However, they are hoping the Supreme Court will bypass the lengthy steps through a reinstatement.
Should the case be retried, jury selection must begin by June 1, 2026.
Hernandez, an 18-year-old bodega clerk at the time of Etan’s death, confessed to strangling the victim after luring him from a school bus stop in New York City, by promising him a soda.
Etan’s remains have never been found, and no forensic evidence has linked Hernandez to the crime.
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.
The Manhattan DA’s office previously said Hernandez should remain incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility until the Supreme Court makes its decision.
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 the 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)]
