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After an appeals court overturned a conviction, prosecutors must decide whether to retry a man in the notorious 1979 child killing for a third time.
July 26, 2025, 3:00 a.m. ET
The 12 jurors considering the fate of a man charged with killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in a SoHo basement wanted guidance.
The defendant, Pedro Hernandez, had told investigators over and over that he had killed the boy in 1979. But his first confession came before the police had told him of his right to remain silent. Investigators quickly read him his rights and got him to repeat his words for a video camera.
Now, in 2017, the jury asked the judge whether, if they found that Mr. Hernandez’s first confession was not voluntary, they should then disregard the later recorded version.
The judge, Maxwell Wiley, responded, “The answer is, ‘no.’”
On Monday, a federal appeals court said that Justice Wiley’s one-word answer had failed to explain a Supreme Court precedent that governs such serial confessions. The three judges ordered that Mr. Hernandez be released from his 25-years-to-life sentence or get a new trial.
The stunning ruling revived a seemingly settled case that has frustrated law enforcement officials in New York City for the greater part of 45 years. The investigation into Etan’s vanishing — his body has never been found — has been filled with sensational turns, tornadoes of tips and alternative suspects.
For Justice Wiley, the decision was the coda to a two-decade career on the bench that ended in April. Reached by phone, Justice Wiley said he had “happily retired.”
