US Supreme Court Restores 2017 Murder Conviction in Etan Patz Missing Case

The US Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the 2017 murder conviction of a man in the 1979 disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz in New York City, one of the most notorious missing-child cases in US history.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices granted a request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to overturn a lower court decision that had set aside the jury’s verdict against former delicatessen worker Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering the boy.

The Supreme Court’s unsigned 10-page ruling, backed by its conservative majority, drew dissent from the court’s three liberal justices.

“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Bragg said in a statement.

Patz disappeared in 1979 while walking alone for the first time to a school bus stop in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood and was never found. His case became one of the first in which a missing child’s photograph was widely circulated on milk cartons in an effort to generate leads.

Police arrested Hernandez in 2012 after receiving a tip that he had confessed to the crime during a church group meeting decades earlier. He later told police that he lured Patz into the basement of the SoHo deli where he worked, strangled him and disposed of the body in an alley.

Hernandez’s defence lawyers argued that he suffered from mental illness and that his confession had been coerced by police.

The defence also sought to shift blame to Jose Ramos, who had dated the Patz family’s babysitter and had long been considered the prime suspect. Ramos, who died in March this year, had served a lengthy prison sentence for sexually abusing boys.

Hernandez, now in his mid-60s, first stood trial in 2015, but the jury failed to reach a verdict after one juror held out over doubts about his guilt. At his second trial in 2017, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

However, the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 2025, ruling that the trial judge had improperly instructed the jury and unfairly influenced the verdict.

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the appeals court’s decision violated a 1996 federal law limiting the power of federal courts to grant relief to prisoners convicted in state courts.

A key issue in the case involved Hernandez’s confessions. He initially admitted to the crime before being informed of his Miranda rights, including the right against self-incrimination and to have an attorney present. After later waiving those rights, he gave two videotaped confessions.

During deliberations in the 2017 trial, jurors asked whether they should disregard the videotaped confessions if they found the earlier unwarned confession involuntary. Trial judge Justice Maxwell Wiley replied: “The answer is no” — a response the appeals court later called improper and “manifestly prejudicial”.

The anniversary of Patz’s disappearance, May 25, continues to be observed in the US as National Missing Children's Day.

 For any enquiries or information, contact ask@tlr.ae or call us on +971 52 644 3004. Follow The Law Reporters on WhatsApp Channels.