The Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York announced Tuesday that it would retry the man it convicted once before in the 1979 murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
“After thorough review, the district attorney has determined that the available, admissible evidence supports prosecuting defendant on the charges of murder in the second degree and kidnapping in the first degree in this matter, and the people are prepared to proceed,” the district attorney’s office said.
Pedro Hernandez, 64, was convicted in 2017 of kidnapping and murdering Etan — a crime that struck terror into the hearts of parents in New York and across the country and stymied the police for decades.
Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after he admitted to officials that he lured the child into the basement of a bodega in the city’s SoHo neighborhood.
But in July, a federal appeals court in New York overturned the conviction and ruled that Hernandez must receive a new trial or be released from custody. He remains behind bars despite his conviction being overturned.
A street shrine to 6-year-old Etan Patz in front of the New York building where suspect Pedro Hernandez confessed to having strangled the boy in 2012. (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images file)
The panel ruled that the trial judge had wrongly instructed the jury. Last month, another judge gave the DA’s office until Dec. 1 to decide to retry Hernandez.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg beat the deadline by a week with Tuesday’s announcement, and Hernandez’s new trial is likely to begin by June 1.
“We are deeply disappointed in this decision as we remain convinced that Mr. Hernandez is an innocent man,” Hernandez’s lawyers Harvey Fishbein and Alice Fontier said in a statement. “But we will be prepared for trial and will present an even stronger defense.”
Etan went missing on May 25, 1979, on his first solo trip to his school bus stop two blocks from the family home. His disappearance spurred the movement to put missing kids’ photos on milk cartons.
In 2001, Etan was declared dead. His body has never been found.
But police continued to look for the person responsible for Etan’s death. Thirty-three years after he vanished, police got a tip from Hernandez’s brother-in-law in 2012 and tracked down Hernandez in Maple Shade, New Jersey.
Hernandez later confessed to kidnapping and killing the child, court records revealed. He was alleged to have told police that he lured the boy into the bodega with the promise of a soda and instead grabbed him by the neck and fatally choked him.
According to court records, Hernandez said he stuffed the boy’s body in a “garbage bag” before he put it in a box and left it with the trash around the corner.
Hernandez’s first trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury. His second trial, which began in September 2016, focused heavily on his confession.
Defense lawyers argued that Hernandez is mentally ill and has a low IQ and that he confessed to the crime only after he underwent hours of interrogation from police.
They said that immediately after Hernandez confessed, police administered Miranda warnings and had him repeat his confession on tape and then to a prosecutor.
During deliberations, the jury asked the court to explain whether it could dismiss Hernandez’s later confessions if it found his pre-Miranda confession was not voluntary.
The judge said the “answer is no” and provided no further explanation. And the jury, after nine days of deliberation, convicted Hernandez of felony murder and first-degree kidnapping but acquitted him of intentional murder.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com