Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said Monday that he intends to retry the against Pedro Hernandez, who confessed to killing 6-year-old Etan Patz.
The murder trial of Hernandez, 54, ended in a mistrial May 8 after jurors said they were deadlocked on the 18th day of deliberations.
Vance announced his intent on MSNBC’s “The Cycle” talk show while acknowledging the difficulty of trying a case without forensic evidence.
“It is a challenging case — I’ve never said otherwise — but it’s a case that we believe should be prosecuted,” he said.
“Victims should not believe that law enforcement forgets about what happened to them, or to their families, simply because of the passage of time. I think some of the most powerful cases that I experience emotionally have been those where — going back 20 years — we’re able to bring closure to a family. The Etan Patz case, certainly. I intend to retry the case”
After a three-month trial, 11 jurors voted to convict while one lone holdout wouldn’t budge.
“The evidence put in by our prosecutors was compelling, and it was clear,” Vance said on the show. “In our system, it happens from time to time that jurors cannot be unanimous, and this was one of those cases.”
Vance said prosecutors will officially announce the retrial at Hernandez’s June 10 court date.
The former bodega clerk admitted in 2012 to strangling Etan, who vanished the first time he walked alone to the school bus stop in Soho on May 25, 1979. But there was no forensic evidence and Etan’s body was never found.
The defense had argued that authorities coerced a false confession from a man with a history of mental illness.
But the child’s long-suffering father, Stan Patz, said he’s convinced Hernandez is the murderer.
“We are frustrated and very disappointed that the jury has been unable to come to a decision,” he said after a judge declared a mistrial.
“Pedro Hernandez kidnapped and killed my son. He is a guilty man who has been conscience stricken due to his deeds and haunted by demons since that day,” he said.