
Appeals court orders new trial for man convicted in 1979 Etan Patz case
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.'
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.
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The Independent
8 minutes ago
- The Independent
FACT FOCUS: Trump claims cashless bail increases crime, but data is inconclusive
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Different jurisdictions, different laws In 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail when the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law abolishing it. The move was part of an expansive criminal justice overhaul adopted in 2021 known as the SAFE-T Act. Under the change, a judge decides whether to release the defendant prior to their trial, weighing factors such as their criminal charges, if they could pose any danger to others and if they are considered a flight risk. Loyola University of Chicago's Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois' new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties. A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes. Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes. A lack of consensus Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates. A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw 'no statistically significant relationship' between bail reform and crime rates. 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The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years. Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney's office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once. A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California's decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy 'caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.' However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase. Many contributing factors It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls. The American Bail Coalition's Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it 'difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.' Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook. 'Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,' he said. 'But there's a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don't necessarily fully understand.'


The Independent
8 minutes ago
- The Independent
Takeaways: US military enters gray area with expanded role at Mexico-US border
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Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'Saddest bodycam ever' shows mom howl on learning babysitter had just 'murdered' her infant
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