A defense attorney for the former grocery clerk convicted of the decades-old murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz asked a Manhattan judge to delay his client’s sentencing by one week.
Pedro Hernandez, 56, was convicted Feb. 14 on retrial of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. Hernandez’s first trial, in 2015, ended in a hung jury.
Lawyer Harvey Fishbein asked Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley to delay the sentencing “for one week in order to provide sufficient time for the defense to prepare relevant post-verdict motions.”
Hernandez faces a life sentence.
Prosecutors filed a letter strongly objecting, saying, “The Patz family has waited almost 40 years for an answer to one of the most heart-wrenching questions a parent can ever be faced with: What happened to their child who disappeared.”
Etan vanished in 1979 while on his way to a school bus stop in Soho.