A store clerk who confessed to kidnapping and killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 should get a new trial and be released from prison in the meantime, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
A jury convicted Pedro Hernandez of felony murder and kidnapping in 2017, after he confessed to luring Patz into a basement as the child walked to his school bus stop alone in SoHo.
An earlier trial against Hernandez had ended in a mistrial after more than two weeks of jury deliberations, as described in the ruling. Hernandez’s attorneys have argued he has a serious mental illness and falsely confessed to police.
Hernandez appealed his 2017 conviction, arguing that the trial judge violated his rights by giving an improper response to a jury note. A panel of appellate judges agreed. They ordered his release from prison, unless a new trial date is set “within a reasonable period.”
A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors are reviewing the decision. Hernandez’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“No fair-minded jurist could reach the conclusion that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge Guido Calabresi wrote in the panel’s 51-page ruling.
Hernandez’s attorney, Ted Diskant, said in a statement that his client spent 13 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, based on an unlawful conviction.
“We are grateful the court has now given Pedro a chance to get his life back, and I call upon the Manhattan district attorney’s office to drop these misguided charges and focus their efforts where they belong: on finding those actually responsible for the disappearance of Etan Patz,” he said.
Patz’s father did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A years-long search for a perpetrator
On May 25, 1979, Patz vanished while walking two blocks from his apartment to the bus, according to court papers. His disappearance made national news, and his face was plastered on the side of milk cartons as authorities tried to find him. Four years later, then-President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 National Missing Children’s Day in Patz’s honor.
In the days after Patz went missing, police scoured nearby buildings, rooftops, basements, elevator shafts, backyards and alleys, as well as the bodega next to the bus stop where witnesses had last spotted the boy, according to the ruling. But the boy was never found. Officers interviewed Hernandez, then an 18-year-old clerk at the store, but they didn’t identify him as a suspect, the ruling states.
Hernandez later told his neighbor, his first wife and several people at a religious retreat that he had killed someone, according to court papers. But the details changed in different retellings.
In one account, he said he had sexually assaulted and stabbed a child in the basement of his workplace, according to the appellate ruling. In another, he said he strangled a child who threw a ball at him. Following renewed interest in the case in 2012, Hernandez’s brother-in-law tipped off police.
In May 2012, police interviewed Hernandez about Patz’s disappearance, according to the ruling. The ruling describes an emotional, hours-long interrogation in which Hernandez paced, cried, lay on the floor and shook after telling detectives that his father abused him as a child.
After more than six hours, Hernandez said he “did it” and told detectives that he choked Patz and put his body in a trash bag, according to court papers. He repeated his confession several times to police, prosecutors and medical professionals, though the ruling states that his account varied. Hernandez told one doctor that he choked the child in a basement surrounded by “a lot of people,” including “some kids,” “some business people, some dressed up in hospital clothing, elephant colors, clowns, Terry-cloth-type people,” according to the ruling.
A doctor who evaluated Hernandez while he was detained on Rikers Island testified in court that he had schizotypal personality disorder, which he said makes it difficult for people “to differentiate between what is going on in your mind, versus what is occurring in the external world,” according to the appellate ruling. The decision states that “Hernandez has an extensive history of mental illness and low IQ,” including diagnoses of psychotic disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and an IQ of between 67 and 76.
Hernandez challenges judge’s response to jury note
Monday’s ruling hinges on a note that jurors at Hernandez’s second trial sent to the judge. Jurors asked whether they should disregard several of Hernandez’s confessions to law enforcement, doctors and loved ones if they found that his initial confession to police was involuntary. The appellate decision found the trial judge didn’t give jurors the instructions they needed to properly evaluate Hernandez’s statements, which they said likely affected the outcome of the trial. They said the trial judge’s decision was so wrong and harmful that Hernandez should be released from prison.
Former Manhattan DA Cy Vance, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement that multiple other courts upheld Hernandez’s conviction before the federal appellate court ruled Monday that “it feels otherwise.”
“Whether one agrees with the federal appeals court or not, in this moment, my thoughts are not with the appeals court, but with Etan and the brave Patz family,” he said. “They waited and persevered for 35 years for justice for Etan, which today, sadly, may have been lost.”
Police have investigated at least two other possible suspects in Patz’s disappearance. In the 1980s, police arrested the boyfriend of Patz’s babysitter after he tried to lure two boys into a drainpipe, according to court papers. A federal prosecutor interviewed the man about Patz’s disappearance in 1988. The man admitted to molesting an 8-year-old boy and was convicted of a sex crime. In 1991, he told the FBI that he had molested a boy he met in Washington Square Park the day that Patz disappeared. But both federal and state prosecutors decided not to pursue a case against him. Law enforcement also searched and excavated the basement workshop of a carpenter who worked near Patz’s apartment and school bus stop. The results of the dig were “inconclusive,” and the carpenter was never charged, according to the ruling.
This story has been updated with additional information. Niamh McAuliffe contributed reporting.
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