The U.S. Supreme Court on June 22 reinstated the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was tried in relation to the high-profile disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979.
The court’s 6–3 decision took the form of an unsigned order and opinion, in which the justices said an appeals court exceeded its authority in how it handled Hernandez’s verdict from a state court in New York. No oral argument was held. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented but did not explain why.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had asked the nation’s highest court to intervene and reverse a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had overturned a state trial court’s guilty verdict finding that former delicatessen worker Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and murdered the child….