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Last week, a federal court of appeals overturned the conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the murder and lure of Ethan Pats, a six-year-old New York boy who disappeared in one of the most famous child cases in US history in 1979.
The three judge panel ruled that a judge in the court gave “clearly inaccurate” guidance on the confession that Hernandez made before advising Miranda’s rights. The ju judge asked if the initial confession was determined to be involuntary, should ignore the two videotaped confessions that it came later.
The judge said “The answer is no,” and did not provide further explanation.
The appeals judge said in their opinion that doing so “provincial courts are in conflict with clearly established federal law.” They abandoned Hernandez’s beliefs and ordered him to be released or retry. He is now 64 years old and has served as a 13-year seedling prisoner in an incident that has haunted New York City for decades.
The 51-page decision body mirrored the story published by Propublica in 2013 before Hernandez was convicted, raising questions about the truthfulness and legality of his confession.
Hernandez reported meeting many of the criteria for those who tend to make false confessions, develop phenomena, and have a major cause of illegal beliefs. He also found that Hernandez’s statements to law enforcement and others over the years were inconsistent and inconsistent with known facts.
On the morning of May 29, 1979, Pats was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop two blocks away, and then disappeared. His loss of failure sparked public concern about missing children as he became one of the first “milk carton kids” and his image was smeared in New York City.
A massive search ensued, and law enforcement spent thousands of hours searching for him. Reid was chased down to Israel. However, no arrests were made. Fees will not be brought in.
In 2012, police in New York and the FBI suddenly took action in such a visible way, digging into the basement of a workshop near the Pats family home, used by carpenters who knew Ethan and were considered suspects.
There were no bargains, but the surge in media attention prompted one of Hernandez’s parents to call the police with hints about rumors that he was playing a role in Pats’s Lost For.
New York police officers arrived at Hernandez’s house in New Jersey on the morning of May 23, 2012 and took him to the local prosecutor’s office to question him. Over the next few hours, Hernandez asked him to go home several times, and the officer said he was trying to fool him, absorbing it, clenching it in his stomach, lying on the floor in the fetal position, and placing a patch of fentanyl on his chest to treat a diagnosis of chronic disease. More than six hours later, he told the officers he “did it.”
He says he offered Pats to Soda to lure him into the basement of the Bodega where he worked. He said he suffocated the boy, put his body in a garbage bag and put the bag in a box, leaving him round the corner in the sunny day.
It was only after his confession that the officer read Hernandez his rights. They then repeated his statements in two video-recorded interviews over the next 24 hours. The story he told contained several contradictions.
The federal court found that the jury judge’s instructions on confessions were “clearly inaccurate” and that the jury was given more thorough instructions and that actual recorded confessions could be ignored.
The examiner had asked about the second confession in the nine-day deliberation, but “they are clearly struggling, no matter what weight they have to give to the confession,” the appeals court wrote.
Propublica covers extensively the early stages of the lawsuit against Hernandez, interviewing people he appears to have confessed over the years, and spoke with various legal and psychological experts about how police tactics can induce false confessions.
We discovered early that previous claims that Hernandez had harmed the child were not only at odds with one another, but also barely resemble the details of his confession to the police. For example, he said he killed a black child. Pats was white.
He also learned that Bodega Hernandez was working for a kind of police hub for police officers searching for Pats. Hernandez said in one of his confessions that he threw a bag of the boy’s book in the back of the fridge there. It was never found.
Experts said a small number of factors often work in generating false confessions, and many of them are included in Hernandez’s situation.
The judges noted many of these same traits in their decisions. In their view, it became even more important that the ju judge had appropriate directions to evaluate the confession.
How the suspect in the murder of Ethan Pats accused of the suspect to confess
Propublica also highlighted how Judge Maxwell Wiley held hearings early in the suit to decide for himself whether Hernandez was properly informed of his rights and whether he had the ability to meaningfully waive. He decided he could use confessions. Wiley, a former Manhattan prosecutor, then restricted any questions he could be asked about it, set fire to it from several news organizations, and maintained subsequent hearings on the secrets of the matter. Wiley, now resigned, did not respond to a call to comment.
In an email, Cyrus Vance Jr., who handled the case with Hernandez as Manhattan District Attorney, said it was “very challenging given the passage of time.”
He said the recent decision was a surprise as other courts of appeal reviewed and maintained the confessions and verdicts.
“Obviously, the ju judges heard considerable expert testimony from both the prosecutor and the defense, and considered both legal instructions by the court during deliberations and prior to the verdict,” he said, adding that Hernandez is guilty and that his ideas continue to believe in “the idea of the Pats family and Ethan.”
Currently, Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, will need to decide whether to try Hernandez again for the third time. The beginning of his two trials ended with the jury judges.
In a statement from Bragg’s office, the spokesman said: “We are considering a decision.”
