The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated the murder conviction of the defendant in the case of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy who went missing in New York in 1979.

This case is considered a turning point that led to the strengthening of the U.S. child missing response system and a shift in public awareness.

According to foreign media outlets including The New York Times (NYT) and NBC on June 22 (local time), the Supreme Court overturned a decision made last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had vacated the conviction of Pedro Hernandez (64), and upheld the original ruling.

Hernandez was convicted of kidnapping and murder in a New York state court in 2017 and is currently serving a sentence of at least 25 years in prison.

The Supreme Court ruled that the federal appeals court had exceeded its authority in the process of overturning the state court's judgment.

The court's stance is that a federal court cannot arbitrarily re-examine factual findings and jury decisions made by a state court.

Etan Patz went missing in May 1979 after leaving his home in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, to walk to his school bus stop alone.

He was never found, and the case remains a landmark event that raised awareness about child abduction and missing children in American society.

It served as a catalyst for campaigns in the U.S. and around the world to publicize missing children, such as printing their photos on milk cartons, and May 25, the day Patz went missing, was later designated as "National Missing Children's Day."

The case is also credited with triggering a social atmosphere where parents became more sensitive to child safety, such as never leaving children unattended.

The investigation remained stagnant for a long time until it reached a turning point in 2012, 33 years after the incident, when Hernandez was identified as a suspect.

At the time, Hernandez stated during police questioning that he had lured the child into a basement and killed him.

Although he later admitted to the crime again, his defense team argued that the initial confession was a false statement made under coercion and challenged its admissibility as evidence.

They also raised questions about the credibility of his statements, citing Hernandez's mental health and cognitive abilities.

In particular, the key issue was whether a defendant could be convicted solely on their own confession in the absence of physical evidence, such as a body.

The first trial in New York state in 2015 ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury, but in a 2017 retrial, the jury returned a guilty verdict against Hernandez.

Subsequently, Hernandez's side requested relief from the federal court, claiming there were issues with the trial process.

While the federal district court initially sided with the state court, the federal appeals court overturned the conviction last year, stating that "improper jury instructions violated the right to a fair trial."

In the Supreme Court hearing held on this day following an appeal by the New York State Prosecutor's Office, the court accepted the prosecution's arguments.

The court ruled that "the federal appeals court exceeded the legal limits for overturning a state court's inherent judicial judgment."

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)