Man Convicted in 1979 Etan Patz Case Granted New Trial
NEW YORK – A man convicted in the 1979 kidnapping and killing of six-year-old Etan Patz must be retried, a judge ruled in July, citing errors in the handling of his initial confession. The ruling throws the decades-old case back into question and sets a deadline of June for a new trial.
Etan Patz disappeared on May 25, 1979, while walking to a bus stop just two blocks from his family’s home in Manhattan, sparking a massive search throughout SoHo. He was legally declared dead in 2001, but his body was never recovered.
The case centered around Pedro Hernandez, who was first convicted in 2016 following two trials.His first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury. The second trial focused heavily on Hernandez’s alleged confession, which he made after approximately seven hours of questioning by police without being read his Miranda rights.
According to court documents, Hernandez later confessed to luring Etan into a bodega wiht the promise of a soda, then grabbing him by the neck and fatally choking him. He allegedly disposed of the boy’s body in a garbage bag, placing it in a box with the trash. hernandez denied any sexual motive in the crime.
However, the recent ruling highlights concerns over the admissibility of Hernandez’s confession.During deliberations in the 2016 trial, the jury questioned whether an un-Mirandized confession should disqualify subsequent, videotaped confessions made after being read his rights. The judge at the time responded that the answer was “no.”
The appellate court found this response to be an error. The July order stated the judge “failed to properly instruct the jury” regarding the implications of the initial, unwarned confession on the later statements.
Hernandez, who has a documented history of mental illness and a low IQ, confessed multiple times, including on video to police and an Assistant District Attorney. The prosecution repeatedly presented these videos during the trial.
Etan patz’s disappearance had a lasting impact, becoming a landmark case in the fight for missing children. It spurred the initiative to print missing children’s photos on milk cartons, with Etan being among the first faces featured in the public awareness campaign.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has not yet commented on whether they will seek to retry Hernandez. A new trial must begin by June, according to the court order.
(Source: NBC News,AP file)
