Supreme Court Reverses Order for New Trial in Etan Patz Murder

The US Supreme Court said a lower court erred when it ordered a new trial for the man found guilty of the murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who was kidnapped off a New York City street in 1979.

In a per curiam order Monday, the justices said the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit exceeded its authority under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to grant habeas relief over flawed jury instructions in state courts when it ordered a new trial for Pedro Hernandez.

Hernandez was convicted in 2017 of murder and kidnapping in connection with Patz’s death and sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted they would have let the Second Circuit’s order granting Hernandez a new trial stand.

Patz’s disappearance helped spark a nationwide campaign to place photos of missing children on milk cartons. His body was never found, and the case remained unsolved until 2012, when a man reported that his brother-in-law, Pedro Hernandez, had confessed to killing a child near Patz’s bus stop blocks from the boy’s home.

Hernandez later confessed to police, both before and after being given a Miranda warning, that he had abducted and strangled Patz.

Hernandez, who has a “limited IQ and a well-documented history of mental illness,” according to the attorneys from McDermott Will & Schulte representing him, argued the trial judge had erred when he told jurors they shouldn’t disregard two videotaped confessions if they found his pre-Miranda warning confession was involuntary.

Appellate courts in New York affirmed his conviction. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last year reversed and ordered Hernandez receive a new trial—finding the trial judge had failed to properly apply Missouri v. Seibert.

In that decision, the US Supreme Court said courts must suppress post-warning confessions when police deliberately question a suspect without Miranda warnings and then seek to repeat the confession after advising them of their rights.

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case, arguing the Second Circuit was barred from overturning Hernandez’s state conviction by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Bragg also argued the court had never extended Seibert, which was about pretrial suppression, to jury deliberations.

The case is McCarthy v. Hernandez, U.S., No. 25-748.