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The conviction in the Etan Patz case was reinstated after the United States Supreme Court restored the verdict on Monday against Pedro Hernandez for the kidnapping and murder of the six-year-old boy who disappeared in Manhattan in 1979. The decision overturned a ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that had opened the door to a new trial, according to The New York Times.
n” “nThe Supreme Court decided that Hernandez will not have a new trial and upheld his 2017 conviction for the kidnapping and murder of the child. According to The New York Times, the majority concluded that the federal appeals court overstepped in reviewing a state conviction, and three justices —Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — noted their dissent.
n” “nThe resolution, issued without a signature, was part of the court’s routine orders and did not include oral hearings. The ruling remands the case to lower courts and reverses the decision from July of last year, when the Second Circuit had ordered Hernandez’s 25-year to life sentence to be vacated or for him to be granted a new trial.
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Pedro Hernández was found guilty of the kidnapping and murder of Etan Patz in May 1979
n” “nHarvey Fishbein, Hernández’s lawyer, stated to The New York Times that his team was “terribly disappointed.” “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in prison for a crime he did not commit,” he stated.
n” “nManhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg maintained in a statement reported by The New York Times that the case had “changed a generation of New Yorkers”.
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He also added: “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family, and will continue to support this important conviction”.
n” “nJulie Patz tenderly embraces her son Etan Kalil Patz in an image before his disappearance in 1979, a case that marked a turning point in the social perception of child safety in the United States (Patz Family)
n” “nHow Etan Patz disappeared and why the case shocked the country
n” “nThe case dates back to May 25, 1979, when Etan Patz left his home in the New York neighborhood of SoHo to walk just two blocks to the school bus stop. It was the first time he had made that trip alone.
n” “nBefore leaving, the boy told his mother, Julie Patz: “It’s okay mom, I can do it alone”. He was carrying a bag with elephants, an Eastern Airlines cap, and a dollar to buy a drink on the way.
n” “nEtan never boarded the bus nor arrived at school. The family alarm was raised hours later, when he did not return home in the afternoon and Julie checked in a round of calls that her son had not appeared at any point along the route.
n” “nEtan Patz was six years old when he was last seen (File)
The police mobilized 100 officers with dogs, while helicopters flew over the area and the Patz house became an operations center for investigators, volunteers, and journalists.
n” “nThree days later, Julie Patz made a public plea directed at whoever might have the boy: “I want him to be with someone who will take care of him… I don’t want to hurt you or judge you, it doesn’t matter who you are, I just want you to bring him home”.
n” “nThe disappearance generated immediate public attention and, along with the murder of Adam Walsh two years later, marked a period of increased caution among parents across the United States, according to The New York Times. The child’s image appeared on milk cartons, bus stops, schools, airports, and other public spaces.
n” “nThis is the original New York Police Department poster regarding the disappearance of Etan Patz in 1979, a case that gave rise to the “Milk Carton Kids” movement (NYPD)
Decades of failed leads and a case without a body
n” “nFor years, Manhattan investigators were unable to determine what had happened and Etan’s body was never found. In 2001, authorities declared him legally dead.
n” “nOne of the first suspects was José Ramos, indirectly linked to the family because he was the partner of a woman who had taken care of the child.
n” “nRamos, who was serving a sentence in a Pennsylvania prison for abusing another minor, always denied having kidnapped Etan and never faced charges due to a lack of evidence.
n” “nIn the year 2000, researchers excavated for eight hours in the basement of a building where Ramos had lived. They found bones, but the experts concluded that they belonged to pets.
n” “nIn 2012, while authorities were examining another line of investigation regarding a worker named Othoniel Miller, a piece of information emerged that would change the investigation. Until then, the file had accumulated suspicions, searches, and reconstructions without a definitive answer. José Ramos was one of the first suspects in the investigation, but he never faced charges due to a lack of direct evidence (ABC News)
n” “nPedro Hernández’s confession and the defense’s doubts
n” “nThe twist came when a man called the authorities and said that his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernández, had told him that he had killed a boy in Manhattan. Following that lead, New York police officers went to look for Hernández in Camden, New Jersey.
n” “nAfter about seven hours of interrogation, Hernández confessed first before receiving the warning of his rights and twice more afterwards. Hernández said that he lured the boy with the offer of a drink to get him to enter the warehouse where he worked, at the corner of Prince and West Broadway.
n” “nHernández said he took Etan to the basement, suffocated him, and then hid the body in a bag, between ice in a freezer, and later in a box that he left in the trash two blocks from the location. He also said he did not know why he had done it and that he had felt “the urge to kill.”
n” “nThe investigation found no scientific evidence linking Hernandez to the crime, according to The New York Times. Even so, a reference to a door that was not at the scene in 1979 convinced detectives that he knew inside details about the warehouse.
n” “nThe defense argued that the confessions were unreliable and that Hernández had invented them to appease the police. His lawyers alleged that the statements stemmed from his low IQ and psychotic delusions. The place in SoHo where Etan Patz disappeared (AFP)
n” “nFrom split juries to the Supreme Court’s final ruling
n” “nThe first trial against Hernández, in 2015, ended without a verdict after 18 days of deliberations, according to The New York Times. The second began in October 2016 and concluded in February 2017.
n” “nThe jury in the second trial found Hernández guilty after nine days of deliberations, according to The New York Times. Judge Maxwell Wiley handed down the sentence on April 14, 2017, and set a penalty of 25 years to life imprisonment.
n” “nIn the midst of that process, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. stated: “The disappearance of Etan Patz haunted families in New York and across the country for nearly four decades”. During the trial, Etan Patz’s father said: “I now know what the face of the devil looks like”. The legal journey included split verdicts and reviews in different judicial instances before reaching a final decision
n” “nThe subsequent legal dispute revolved around the instructions Wiley gave to the jury regarding serial confessions. According to The New York Times, when the jurors asked if they should discard a subsequent confession if they considered the first one involuntary, the judge replied with a single word: “No”.
n” “nThe Second Circuit later found that Wiley should have better explained a Supreme Court precedent regarding that type of confession and overturned the conviction. The Supreme Court responded on Monday that the federal court had exceeded its authority, because the applicable law does not allow for the review of a state conviction based on its own assessment of the reliability of the evidence.
n” “nFor years, the case became a national symbol of missing children and pushed for public and private changes, from search campaigns to new care routines.
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