The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the conviction of Pedro Hernandez in the kidnapping and murder case of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who disappeared in downtown Manhattan in 1979.
New York prosecutors had appealed against a federal appeals court decision from July 2025 that overturned the verdict.
The court accepted the appeal in a 6-3 vote, with three left-wing justices dissenting, the Associated Press reported.
The first trial of Hernandez, 64, in 2015 ended in a mistrial.
In his 2017 re-trial, he was convicted and handed 25 years to life in state prison.
“In a shocking ruling,” a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decided last year that Hernandez should be given a new trial or go free, the New York Post reported at the time.
The appeals court ruled that the judge had improperly instructed the jury when they asked him how to deal with the fact that Hernandez confessed before he was read his Miranda rights.
In the appeal to the Supreme Court, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg branded the basis for overturning the conviction “a slender reed” that ignored a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses, AP reported.
The justices agreed in an unsigned opinion.
“The Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,” the justices wrote.
Commending the Supreme Court’s decision, Bragg said, “It’s impossible to imagine the pain of losing a child, waiting so long for justice and having to brace for more proceedings.”
AP quoted Hernandez’s attorneys Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier as saying: “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit.”
Hernandez didn’t become a suspect until 2012, when police received a tip that he had appeared to confess during a prayer group to killing a child in New York, the Post reported.
Hernandez said he enticed Patz to the basement of his bodega (convenience store) near the boy’s bus stop in Manhattan by promising him a soda. He admitted strangling Etan until he went limp in a videotaped confession, the Post reported.
“Prosecutors said that Mr. Hernandez had a history of sexually abusing a family member, drug use and domestic violence,” The New York Times reported.
Although the police put hundreds of detectives on the case, Patz’s body has never been found.
