Supreme Court reinstates conviction in Etan Patz murder case

The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, restoring a verdict in one of New York City’s most enduring missing-child cases.

The justices ruled 6-3 to grant an appeal by New York prosecutors, reversing a federal appeals court decision that had thrown out Hernandez’s conviction. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

Hernandez, 64, was convicted in 2017 in New York state court of kidnapping and murdering Etan and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He has been serving his sentence at Elmira Correctional Facility in New York and will be eligible for parole in 2037.

“The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,” the Supreme Court said in an unsigned opinion, referring to the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The high court said federal courts should not second-guess state courts under a 1996 federal law limiting federal court oversight of state criminal trials.

The Supreme Court added that the appeals panel appeared to have “serious doubt about the reliability of Hernandez’s confessions,” but said federal law “does not allow a federal habeas court to disturb a state-court conviction based on such an evaluation of the evidence.”

Etan disappeared on May 25, 1979, after leaving his home in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood to walk alone for the first time to a school bus stop two blocks away. He had a dollar to buy a soda at a corner deli. He never arrived at school, and his body has never been found.

The case drew national attention and changed how many parents supervised their children. Etan was among the first missing children to appear on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.

Hernandez worked at a nearby convenience store at the time of Etan’s disappearance but was not identified as a suspect until 2012. In his confession, according to The Guardian, Hernandez said he lured Etan into the basement of the store where he worked, strangled him and discarded his body in an alley.

Hernandez’s first trial, in 2015, ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. A second jury convicted him in 2017.

The Second Circuit overturned that conviction in July, finding fault with the trial judge’s response to a jury question during deliberations. Jurors asked whether, if they decided Hernandez’s earlier confession before he was advised of his rights was involuntary, they had to disregard later confessions as well. The judge responded, “the answer is no.” The appeals court said the jurors should have received a fuller explanation, including the possibility of discounting all of the confessions.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had criticized the basis for overturning the conviction as “a slender reed” that he said effectively ignored a five-month trial with 66 witnesses. After Monday’s ruling, Bragg said, “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”

Hernandez’s lawyers have argued that his confession was false and that he suffered from mental illness that sometimes caused hallucinations. They said police questioned him for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview, after which he repeated the confession on tape at least twice.

“We are firmly disappointed with the decision because we firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime he did not do,” Hernandez’s attorneys said, according to CBS News. The Associated Press quoted them as saying they were “terribly disappointed” and believed “an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit.”