Etan Patz Killing: Pedro Hernandez Sentencing Delayed Amid Jury Questions

SOHO, NY — The man convicted of killing and kidnapping 6-year-old Etan Patz won’t be sentenced until April while his lawyers probe the jury process in the trial. For more news from SoHo and Little Italy, sign up for Patch news alerts here.

Last month, Pedro Hernandez was found guilty of kidnapping and killing Etan in a 1979 crime that shocked the city and the nation, and that remained unsolved for decades. Now, almost forty years later, Hernandez’s lawyers are questioning the recent conviction because they say some members of the jury received improper information during the trial.

Hernandez’s lawyers think that the jurors who convicted him may have received information about their client’s first trial in 2015, which ended in a hung jury after one holdout juror refused to convict. Here’s more on the current conflict, via the New York Times:

At issue now is whether court officers told jurors at the second trial that members of the first jury were in the courtroom regularly, sitting near Stanley Patz, Etan’s father. Justice Wiley took pains to limit what the second jury heard about the first trial, ruling that the lawyers could refer to it only as a “previous proceeding.”

“The concern is that the jurors were provided information they should not have had,” Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said on Tuesday outside court. “That’s the problem.”

Sentencing has been delayed until at least April.

Image via Rich Mitchell on Flickr