NEW YORK (AP) — New York City prosecutors say they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to restore a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz after an appeals court overturned the verdict in July.
The Manhattan district attorney’s made the disclosure in a court filing Sunday asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold off on enforcing its decision in the case of Pedro Hernandez. The former convenience store clerk became a suspect over 30 years after the first grader vanished.
The ruling presents “substantial legal questions,” prosecutor Stephen Kress wrote. The district attorney’s office has now “committed to seek Supreme Court review,” he said.
In overturning the conviction, a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel ordered Hernandez freed unless he is retried “within a reasonable period.”
Kress asked that the appeals court wait until the Supreme Court’s filing deadline of Oct. 20 before sending the case back to a lower-level federal judge to set a retrial date. That could be put on hold indefinitely if the high court agrees to weigh in on the case.
The 2nd Circuit previously granted prosecutors a 30-day extension that was to expire Sunday. It hasn’t ruled on the new request.
Hernandez opposes the prosecution’s request for more time.
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He has already been tried twice. His 2017 conviction came after a prior jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Now 64, he has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Hernandez’s lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate. They emphasized that the admission came after police questioned him for seven hours without reading him his rights or recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice.
At issue in the 2nd Circuit appeal was the state trial judge’s response to jurors’ questions about whether they had to disregard the recorded confessions if they found the first, unrecorded one was invalid. The judge said no.
The appeals court, in overturning Hernandez’s conviction, said the jury should have gotten a more thorough explanation of its options, which could have included disregarding all of the confessions.
Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s downtown Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished. Police met him while canvassing the area but didn’t suspect him until they got a 2012 tip that he’d made remarks years earlier about having killed a child in New York, not mentioning Etan’s name.
Etan’s case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who had been allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.
The Patzes’ advocacy helped establish a national missing-children hotline and made it easier for law enforcement agencies to share information about such cases. The May 25 anniversary of Etan’s disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
