A federal appeals court on Monday ordered a new trial for the former store clerk convicted of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz more than four decades ago in one of the nation’s most high-profile missing child cases.
The court overturned the guilty verdict for Pedro Hernandez over an issue involving how the trial judge handled a jury note during his trial.
Hernandez was serving 25 years to life in prison after being convicted of the murder and kidnapping in his second trial in 2017.
In 2015, his first trial ended in a deadlocked jury.
The Ruling
The trial judge gave “clearly wrong” and “manifestly prejudicial” instructions to the jury when it asked about Hernandez’s confessions to law enforcement, according to the appeals court. Specifically, jurors asked whether they should dismiss a confession made by Hernandez after he was advised of his Miranda rights if they deemed a prior confession, made before Miranda rights were offered, to be invalid.
The judge told the jury no. The appeals court said the judge’s answer to the jury was incorrect.
In an emailed statement to NTD, defense attorney Harvey Fishbein applauded the ruling on behalf of the trial and appellate attorneys.
“For more than 13 years, Pedro Hernandez has been in prison for a crime he did not commit and based on a conviction that the Second Circuit has now made clear was obtained in clear violation of law,” Fishbein wrote. “We are grateful the Court has now given Pedro a chance to get his life back, and I call upon the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to drop these misguided charges and focus their efforts where they belong: on finding those actually responsible for the disappearance of Etan Patz.”
Who Is Etan Patz?
The 6-year old boy disappeared on May 25, 1979, when he walked to the school bus alone for the first time in his SoHo neighborhood.
Hernandez, who worked at a bodega at that time in the same neighborhood, was interviewed by police but didn’t become a suspect until 2012 when authorities received a tip that he made a comment about killing a child.
Hernandez later in a recorded confession said that he offered soda to the boy and then enticed him to the basement where he choked him. Patz was still alive when Hernandez placed him in a box that he left in an alley, according to his confession.
The boy’s body has never been found.
Defense attorneys maintained his confessions were false, claiming Hernandez suffered from mental illness and had a very low IQ. The defense team also urged the jury at the time to consider looking at Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile who dated a woman who sometimes walked the boy home from school.
A civil court declared Patz legally dead in 2001.
What Happens Next?
The federal appeals court has ordered Hernandez’s release unless the state gives him a new trial within a reasonable period to be set by the lower court judge.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said it was reviewing the decision.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
