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new york City prosecutors on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
Even as prosecutors prepare to re-try the accused man, Pedro Hernandez, they are hoping the Supreme Court will short-circuit that process by reinstatement of his 2017 conviction. A federal appeals court overturned the verdict this summer, saying a New York trial judge had mishandled how he answered a question from jurors.
“Invalidating a state jury’s verdict on such a thin read violates a statute” that limits how federal courts can invalidate a state-court conviction, Manhattan District Attorney alvin bragg and some high-ranking representatives wrote in the filing.
They asked the high court to, essentially, overturn Hernandez’s conviction. Prosecutors said it came after a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses, some of whom have since died.
A message seeking comment was sent to Hernandez’s attorneys.
Meanwhile, prosecutors and Hernandez’s attorneys are scheduled to meet in court Friday to discuss scheduling and steps toward a retrial. A different judge is presiding, as the former judge in the case is no longer on the bench.
Under federal court rulings in the case, jury selection must begin by June 1, or Hernandez must be released from prison. Now 64, he is serving a sentence ranging from 25 years to life in prison.
Hernandez confessed to the crime under police interrogation, but his lawyers say he falsely confessed because of a mental illness that sometimes caused him to hallucinate. He emphasized that this confession came after police interrogated him for approximately seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape at least twice.
On May 25, 1979, Ethan disappeared while walking to his downtown Manhattan school bus stop. Hernandez worked at a nearby convenience store at the time, but Maple Shed, new JerseyThe resident did not become a suspect until 2012.
Ethan was one of the first missing children to appear on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
Hernandez has already been tried twice. A jury deadlocked in 2015, and then a different panel of jurors convicted him in a retrial in 2017.
During deliberations, the 2017 jurors asked a complex question: If they decided that Hernandez did not confess voluntarily even though he had not yet been informed of his rights, should they disregard his other statements? The then judge simply replied, “The answer is no.” The jury convicted.
Overturning that decision, the appeals court said there should have been a more detailed answer to the jury’s question, including the possibility of throwing out all the confessions.