LOWER MANHATTAN — The retrial of Pedro Hernandez, the former SoHo bodega clerk accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz 36 years ago, has been pushed to September because of his lawyer's health.
Hernandez's retrial was initially slated to start this month, but proceedings have been postponed after Hernandez's lead lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said he may need to undergo surgery because of a back problem, during a hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court Monday.
A mistrial was declared in Hernandez's murder trial last year, after 18 days of deliberations, when a lone holdout juror refused to convict Hernandez for the boy’s death.
Jury selection is now slated to begin in September, Judge Maxwell Wiley said Monday.
An exact date has not yet been set.
Etan, who went missing as he walked to the school bus by himself for the first time in May 1979, has never been found.
Etan’s father, Stan Patz, sat in the court room for the brief hearing Monday. Patz has been vocal about his belief that Hernandez, 55, is the killer.
Hernandez, a 55-year-old husband and father of three from New Jersey with no criminal record, was tried after confessing to killing Etan when he worked in a bodega on Prince Street in 1979.
That trial ended in a hung jury, with the holdout juror saying he had doubts about Hernandez’s confessions — statements that Hernandez’s lawyers argued were coerced and the delusions of a mentally ill man.
