NEW YORK (AP) — New York City prosecutors asked the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday to reinstate a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
Even as prosecutors prepare to retry the accused man, Pedro Hernandez, they are hoping the Supreme Court will short-circuit that process by reinstating his 2017 conviction. A federal appeals court overturned the verdict this summer, faulting how a New York trial judge had answered a question from jurors.
“That invalidation of a state jury verdict on such a slender reed flouted” a law that limits when federal courts can invalidate a state-court conviction, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and some high-ranking deputies wrote in the filing.
They asked the high court, essentially, to reverse the reversal of Hernandez' conviction. Prosecutors noted that it came after a five-month-long trial with 66 witnesses, some of whom have since died.
A message seeking comment was sent to Hernandez's lawyers.
Meanwhile, prosecutors and Hernandez's attorneys are due in court Friday to discuss scheduling and steps leading toward a retrial. A different judge is presiding, as the case's former judge is no longer on the bench.
Under federal court rulings in the case, jury selection must begin by June 1, or Hernandez must be released from prison. Now 64, he has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Hernandez admitted to the crime under police questioning, but his lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate. They emphasized that the admission came after police queried him for about seven hours before reading him his rights and recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice.
Etan vanished while walking to his downtown Manhattan school bus stop on May 25, 1979. Hernandez worked at a nearby convenience shop at the time, but the Maple Shade, New Jersey, resident didn't become a suspect until 2012.
Etan was among the first missing children ever to appear on milk cartons, and the anniversary of his disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.
Hernandez already has been tried twice. A jury deadlocked in 2015, and then a different panel of jurors convicted him at a 2017 retrial.
During deliberations, the 2017 jurors asked a complicated question: If they decided Hernandez didn't confess voluntarily when he hadn't been read his rights yet, must they disregard his other confessions? The then-judge responded simply, “the answer is no.” The jury went on to convict.
In overturning that verdict, the appeals court said the jury's question should have gotten a more fulsome answer, including the possibility of discounting all the confessions.
FILE- Pedro Hernandez appears in Manhattan criminal court in New York on Nov. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, Pool, File)
FILE - A photograph of Etan Patz hangs on an angel figurine at a makeshift memorial, May 28, 2012, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — TikTok has signed agreements with three major investors — Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX — to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture, ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States.
The deal is expected to close on Jan. 22, according to an internal memo seen by The Associated Press. In the communication, CEO Shou Zi Chew confirmed to employees that ByteDance and TikTok signed the binding agreements with the consortium.
“I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued dedication and tireless work. Your efforts keep us operating at the highest level and will ensure that TikTok continues to grow and thrive in the U.S. and around the world,” Chew wrote in the memo to employees. “With these agreements in place, our focus must stay where it’s always been—firmly on delivering for our users, creators, businesses and the global TikTok community.”
Half of the new TikTok U.S. joint venture will be owned by a group of investors — among them Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX, who will each hold a 15% share. 19.9% of the new app will be held by ByteDance itself, and another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors, according to the memo. The memo did not say who the other investors are and both TikTok and the White House declined to comment.
The U.S. venture will have a new, seven-member majority-American board of directors, the memo said. It will also be subject to terms that “protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”
U.S. user data will be stored locally in a system run by Oracle.
TikTok’s algorithm — the secret sauce that powers its addictive video feed — will be retrained on U.S. user data to “ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said. The U.S. venture will also oversee content moderation and policies within the country.
American officials have previously warned that ByteDance’s algorithm is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties — specifically the algorithm — with ByteDance.
The deal marks the end of years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration tries to reach an agreement for the sale of the company.
Three more executive orders followed, as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for a TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement. The third came in June, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.
TikTok has more than 170 million users in the U.S. About 43% of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published this fall.
FILE - In this July 21, 2020 file photo, a man opens social media app 'TikTok' on his cell phone, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)
