A U.S. appeals court on Monday ordered that a man convicted for the 1979 murder of a 6-year-old New York City boy should receive a new trial or be released.
The disappearance of Etan Patz gripped the city for years before Pedro Hernandez confessed to luring the boy into a basement and attacking him in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood in 1979.
Hernandez was arrested in 2012 after a decadeslong search for answers in Patz's disappearance on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop.
Hernandez's lawyers said their client was mentally ill and his confession was false.
The Manhattan district attorney's office charged Hernandez, whose first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury. He was found guilty of murder in 2017 after nine days of jury deliberations.
Hernandez's attorneys appealed the verdict, arguing that the trial court's instructions to the jury were improper and prejudiced the verdict, The New York Times reported.
"We conclude that the state trial court contradicted clearly established federal law and that this error was not harmless," the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel held in its ruling Monday, the Times reported.
A Manhattan DA office spokesperson told the newspaper the office is "reviewing the decision."
Hernandez, 64, is in state prison serving a 25-years-to-life sentence, ABC 7 reported.
Hernandez, who has a documented history of mental illnesses and a low IQ, initially confessed after seven hours of questioning by three police officers, the TV station reported.
After he confessed, Hernandez was administered Miranda warnings and repeated his confession on tape multiple times.
During jury deliberations, the judge received three notes about Hernandez's confessions. One question asked the judge to explain whether, if the jury found that Hernandez's confession before he was read his rights "was not voluntary," it "must disregard" the later confessions.
The judge responded, without further explanation, that "the answer is no."
Patz was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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