Prosecutors said the family of Etan Patz, whose body was never found, should not endure a new trial.
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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled June 22 that a man convicted of kidnapping and killing a 6-year-old toddler in one of the most infamous “cold cases” in American history should not be granted a new trial.
In an unsigned opinion, the court overturned a ruling that found the jury that convicted Pedro Hernandez for the murder of Etan Patz was improperly instructed.
Etan disappeared near his home in New York City more than 40 years ago. Although his body has never been found, his disappearance helped change the way missing children are treated.
Hernandez, a former clerk in Etan’s neighborhood, was named a suspect in 2012. Hernandez confessed to the crime, but his defense team argued that the confession was false and due to mental illness. After the first murder trial ended in a hung jury, Hernandez was convicted in a second trial in 2017 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
The New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the conviction last year. The court said the jurors received instructions from the trial judge that may have unfairly steered them toward a guilty verdict.
The appeals court said the judge did not properly tell jurors how to take into account the fact that Hernandez’s first confession was made before he was informed of his rights, including the right to an attorney and the right to remain silent.
New York prosecutors said the appeals court erred in overturning the jury’s verdict “with such thin reeds.”
A retrial for Hernandez may be difficult because so much time has passed since the crimes occurred and some of the witnesses who testified at his trial have died, prosecutors wrote in their Supreme Court appeal.
And, they said, Etan’s family “will have to endure yet another highly publicized account of the violence inflicted on six-year-old Etan, after decades of waiting for answers to his disappearance.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Etan’s “horrific murder” “changed a generation of New Yorkers.”
“My office remains steadfast in the pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to support this important conviction,” Bragg said in a statement following the court’s ruling.
AMBER milk carton warnings and photos
Etan’s case, along with that of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida in 1981 and whose body parts were found two weeks later, is believed to have brought media attention to missing children and changed the way the FBI and other agencies across the country handle such cases.
Unlike stolen cars and other items, which have a national database, there is no crime database for children, the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children said. There was also no amber alert system.
Etan was one of the first, and still most notorious, children to be featured as a missing person on the side of a milk carton. In the 1980s, containers often displayed posters with photos of missing children and new hotlines for sharing information about their whereabouts. Although the “milk carton kids” movement did not last long and did not lead to many success stories, for many people, milk cartons are still associated with missing children.
