{"id":3363,"date":"2026-06-22T14:35:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=3363"},"modified":"2026-06-22T14:35:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:35:52","slug":"supreme-court-wont-order-new-trial-in-infamous-murder-of-etan-patz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=3363","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court won\u2019t order new trial in infamous murder of Etan Patz"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>\n            The Supreme Court on Monday  and declined to invalidate the conviction of a man who confessed to killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, reversing a lower court decision that likely would have required a new trial.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=3361\">Exclusive: Trump administration uses homeland security funds to force states into election changes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            Patz disappeared on the morning of May 25, 1979, the first time his parents allowed him to walk by himself to his bus stop about a block away from his home in SoHo. The disappearance sparked a highly publicized search for the boy, and brought national attention to cases of missing children across the country after authorities put his image on thousands of milk cartons. His body was never found.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The investigation into his disappearance stalled until 2012 when police learned that Pedro Hernandez, who had worked at a bodega near the bus stop, told his ex-wife and others that he had strangled a boy years earlier. He repeated the confessions to law enforcement and was later convicted of felony murder and kidnaping. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Hernandez\u2019s lawyers said his confession was false and caused by mental illness.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Hernandez filed for habeas corpus relief in federal court, challenging the way the trial judge responded to a question from the jury about his confessions. A federal district court denied the petition, but the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ordered Hernandez to be released or retried.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cThe Second Circuit exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief,\u201d the Supreme Court said in an  Monday. \u201cThe panel\u2019s opinion appears to reflect serious doubt about the reliability of Hernandez\u2019s confessions, but (federal law) does not allow a federal habeas court to disturb a state-court conviction based on such an evaluation of the evidence.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=3357\">DOJ may be able to release potentially embarrassing Biden audio recordings unless courts step in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            The court\u2019s three liberals \u2014 Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson \u2014 said they would have declined to upend a lower court\u2019s decision. They did not explain their reasoning.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The judge\u2019s response was \u201cclearly wrong,\u201d the 2nd Circuit said in its ruling, and \u201cthe error was manifestly prejudicial.\u201d The question dealt with whether the jury \u201cmust disregard\u201d subsequent confessions if it found that Hernandez\u2019s confession before he was read his Miranda right was not voluntary. The judge responded that the answer was no, despite a 2004 Supreme Court holding that found similar policework unconstitutional.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Prosecutors in Manhattan appealed to the Supreme Court in December.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cRetrial may pose \u2018daunting difficulties\u2019 given that the crime here occurred nearly fifty years ago and several of the already-elderly witnesses have died since the last trial in 2016,\u201d they told the Supreme Court in their appeal.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But attorneys for Hernandez said their client had been \u201cwrongfully held in state custody for almost 14 years\u201d and that the 2nd Circuit\u2019s decision was based on the \u201cstraightforward application of this court\u2019s precedent to the \u2018extraordinary circumstances of this case.\u2019\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=3355\">Trump\u2019s Iran agreement embraces sanctions relief, a policy he and his team once denounced<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court on Monday sided with New York prosecutors and declined to invalidate the conviction of a man who confessed to killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, reversing a lower court decision that likely would have required a new trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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