By Canadian Press

Appeals court orders new trial for man convicted in 1979 Etan Patz case

Jul 21, 2025 | 12:00 PM

NEW YORK (AP) — The man convicted of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 was awarded a new trial Monday as a federal appeals court overturned the guilty verdict in one of the nation’s most notorious missing child cases.

Pedro Hernandez has been serving 25 years to life in prison since his 2017 conviction. He had been arrested in 2012 after a decadeslong, haunting search for answers in Etan’s disappearance on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop.

The appeals court overturned the conviction because of an issue involving how the trial judge handled a jury note during Hernandez 2017 trial — his second. His first trial ended in a jury deadlock in 2015. The ruling says that the judges concluded that the state trial court’s instruction was not only “clearly wrong” but “manifestly prejudicial”

The court ordered his release unless the state gives him a new trial within a reasonable period to be set by the lower court judge.

Emily Tuttle, a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney, said “We are reviewing the decision.”

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Harvey Fishbein, an attorney for Hernandez, declined to comment when reached Monday by phone.

Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished.

Hernandez, who’s from Maple Shade, New Jersey, later confessed to choking Etan. But his lawyers said he was mentally ill and his confession was false.

Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who many once allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.

“Through this painful and utterly horrific real-life story, we came to realize how easily our children could disappear,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat who made a 2009 campaign promise to revisit the case if elected.

The Patzes’ advocacy helped to establish a national missing-children hotline and to make 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.

The Associated Press