The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, siding with New York prosecutors and narrowing federal oversight of a state criminal trial. By a 6-3 vote, the justices granted the appeal after a federal appeals court had overturned the verdict, putting Pedro Hernandez back under the weight of a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Who Gets the Final Say
The ruling handed New York prosecutors what they wanted: the chance to preserve a conviction that a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had thrown out because of how the judge answered a question from jurors. The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, said federal courts should not second-guess state courts under a 1996 federal law intended to reduce federal court oversight of state criminal trials. “The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,” the justices wrote.
That is the machinery at work here: prosecutors pushing to keep a conviction alive, federal judges pulling back, and the highest court in the land reminding everyone where the boundaries of state power are supposed to sit. The three liberal justices dissented.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called the basis for overturning the conviction “a slender reed” that essentially ignored a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses. Bragg, a Democrat, later hailed the high court’s decision and said, “It’s impossible to imagine the pain of losing a child, waiting so long for justice and having to brace for more proceedings.” He added that he hoped the Patz family gained some peace of mind from the ruling.
A message seeking comment was sent to Etan’s father.
What the Trial Machine Did
Hernandez, 64, has already been through the grinder twice. His first trial ended in a mistrial in 2015. A different panel of jurors convicted him at a 2017 retrial. Prosecutors had been preparing to try him for a third time before the Supreme Court stepped in to restore the conviction.
During the 2017 deliberations, jurors asked a complicated question: If they decided Hernandez didn’t confess voluntarily when he hadn’t been read his rights yet, must they disregard his other confessions? The then-judge answered simply, “the answer is no.” The jury went on to convict.
In overturning that verdict, the appeals court said the jury’s question should have gotten a more fulsome answer, including the possibility of discounting all the confessions. The Supreme Court rejected that approach and said the federal court had gone too far.
Hernandez’s lawyers said they were “terribly disappointed” by the ruling. “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” attorneys Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier said.
Confessions, Rights, and the State’s Story
Hernandez made statements to confidants years ago about having killed a child or young man in New York, and he later told police he’d killed Etan. His lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate. They emphasized that his admission to police came after detectives queried him for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice.
Etan vanished while walking to his downtown Manhattan school bus stop on May 25, 1979. Hernandez worked at a nearby convenience shop at the time, but the Maple Shade, New Jersey, resident didn’t become a suspect until 2012. Etan was among the first missing children ever to appear on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
The case has moved through the courts for years, with each institution claiming to be correcting the last one. The Supreme Court’s ruling now leaves the conviction in place and sends the matter back into the same legal maze that has already produced a mistrial, a conviction, an appeal, and another round of waiting.
Asked about next steps, Bragg said prosecutors would await guidance from appellate judges and the state trial court that has handled the case. Hernandez’s retrial had been expected to start in September, and his lawyers and prosecutors were due to give the trial judge a status update next week.