The former bodega clerk found guilty of the infamous 1979 disappearance and murder of little Etan Patz should be given a new trial — or set free, a federal appeals court ordered Monday in a shocking ruling.
The court overturned the 2017 murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who confessed to luring the 6-year-old boy into the basement of the bodega near his Manhattan schoolbus stop with the promise of a soda.
Hernandez, now 64, had argued in his appeal that jury instructions during his high-profile Manhattan trial were improper and prejudiced the outcome.
“We conclude that the state trial court contradicted clearly established federal law and that this error was not harmless,” the appeals panel wrote in its ruling.
The 2nd Circuit Court Of Appeals judges ordered that Hernandez — who was serving a sentence of 25-years to life in state prison — be freed unless he’s put on trial for a third time “within a reasonable period.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg must now decide whether to re-try the case, which had been brought by his predecessor, Cy Vance. A spokeswoman for the DA’s office said Monday that it was reviewing the court’s decision.
Etan’s disappearance had baffled authorities and fascinated the public for years after the boy vanished from a SoHo street on May 25, 1979 — the very first time his parents allowed him to walk alone to his bus stop.
He became one of the first missing kids ever pictured on milk cartons and the anniversary of his disappearance was designated National Missing Children’s Day.
Hernandez didn’t become a suspect until 2012, when cops received a tip that he’d apparently confessed during a prayer group to killing a child in New York.
During a videotaped interrogation, Hernandez admitted to strangling Etan until he went limp.
“Something just took over me,” Hernandez said in one of the recorded confessions, adding that he’d wanted to tell someone, “but I didn’t know how to do it. I felt so sorry.”
A missing poster for Etan Patz. AP
Etan’s father, Stanley Patz, at a press conference after Hernandez was sentenced on April 18, 2017. Natan Dvir
The Post’s cover after Hernandez was convicted for the murder.
The child’s body was never recovered, and no physical evidence ever tied Hernandez to the crime.
Hernandez’s first trial ended in 2015 with a hung jury.
After a re-trial in 2017, he was found guilty of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to the maximum of 25 years to life in prison.
But during deliberations, jurors sent a note to the judge asking whether they should disregard all of Hernandez’s videotaped confessions if they found that an earlier admission he made before he’d been read his Miranda rights was “not voluntary.”
A copy of the New York Post at a memorial for Etan Patz in Soho on May 28, 2012. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File
A New York police crime scene unit arrives as officials search for evidence Thursday, April 19, 2012, at the intersection of Prince and Wooster streets in New York. Chad Rachman/New York PostManhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley responded to the jury that “without further explanation, that ‘the answer is, no,’” the appeals court ruling said.
The panel returned to their deliberations and convicted Hernandez seven days later.
Jurors should have at the very least been told to make up their own minds about the later confessions, Hernandez’s lawyer argued.
Instead, the judge’s short response “unquestionably impacted the verdict,” the federal judges agreed Monday.
Hernandez’s legal team has argued that his confessions were the result of delusions suffered as part of a mental illness.
“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 the law,” his attorneys said in a statement.
Attempts to reach Patz’s family were unsuccessful Monday.
— Additional reporting by Mikella Schuettler
