New Twist in the Case of Etan Patz, the 6-Year-Old Who Disappeared Without a Trace in NY
· Telemundo McAllen (KTLM)
NEW YORK — The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated on Monday the conviction of Puerto Rican Pedro Hernández, found guilty of murdering 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York in 1979, a case that shocked the nation. In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled against the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that it had "overstepped" its authority by overturning Hernández's guilty verdict in 2025. The Supreme Court's decision follows a request from the Manhattan District Attorney to reverse the Appeals Court's ruling. This court argued last July that the judge overseeing the case made an error in the responses given to the jury regarding Hernández's confession to the police. Hernández was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years to life for the kidnapping and murder of the child, following a mistrial in 2015. In 2012, the Puerto Rican was arrested after confessing to suffocating Patz, who disappeared while walking alone from his home in the SoHo neighborhood to his school bus stop. At the time of the incident, Hernández was 18 years old, worked in a store, and allegedly lured the boy into a basement with a soda bottle. Hernández's attorney, Harvey Fishbein, questioned the Supreme Court's ruling in a statement, expressing that he was "terribly disappointed." "We firmly believe that an innocent man is in prison for a crime he did not commit," he stated. Meanwhile, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg expressed his support for "this important conviction" and affirmed that the case of Patz, whose body has still not been found, "changed a generation of New Yorkers." The disappearance of the young boy, one of the first minors whose image appeared on milk cartons across the United States, shocked the public for years, and in 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan declared May 25 as "National Missing Children's Day."
AI summary · Source: Telemundo McAllen (KTLM) →
