SCOTUS reinstates murder conviction because clearly established federal law does not require jury to determine legality of defendant’s confession.
McCarthy v. Hernandez, USSC No. 25-748, 6/22/2026, reversing a decision of the 2nd Circuit, Scotusblog page (with links to briefs and commentary)
SCOTUS reversed the court of appeals’ decision granting habeas relief to a man convicted in 2016 of murdering a six-year old boy in 1979 because the lower court did not correctly apply clearly established federal law regarding the jury’s role in assessing the legality of the defendant’s confessions.
In its 2004 decision Missouri v. Seibert, SCOTUS held that a confession was inadmissible where police questioned a suspect in custody without providing a Miranda warning and, after eliciting a confession, advised the person of his Miranda rights and asked the suspect to repeat the confession. Justice Kennedy concurred in the judgment, remarking that a post-warning confession obtained through a deliberate two-step strategy intended to violate Miranda is inadmissible unless law enforcement takes specific, curative steps to attenuate it from the pre-warning confession. (Slip op. at pp. 5-6).
Pedro Hernandez confessed in 2012 to strangling a six-year old boy in 1979 and dumping his body in an alley while he was interviewed at a prosecutor’s office. He was not advised of his Miranda rights before his first confession. Police then read Hernandez his rights, he waived them, and he made a second, videotaped confession. He was driven to another district attorney’s office, received another Miranda warning, waived his rights, and made another videotaped confession.
Hernandez was charged in New York state court with intentional murder, kidnapping, and felony murder. His first trial resulted in a hung jury and his second trial began in 2016. Hernandez’s motion to suppress his statements was denied because the trial court determined he was not in custody when he made his first confession and he knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights before his second and third confessions.
At his trial, however, New York law allowed Hernandez to ask the jury to disregard his confessions if it found his statements were “involuntarily made,” which New York defined as in violation of the defendant’s state or federal constitutional rights or in violation of Miranda. (Slip op. at p. 3). The trial court instructed the jury accordingly. But New York does not require the trial court to instruct the jury on whether an initial involuntary confession taints later confessions and therefore imposes an obligation to disregard them, and the trial court did not instruct the jury to determine whether Hernandez’s post-warning confessions were sufficiently attenuated from his first confession. While it was deliberating, however, the jury asked the court for guidance on whether it was required to disregard the later confessions if it found the first confession was involuntary. The trial court answered the question with “no.” The court explained to the parties that New York law does not empower a jury to assess whether a later confession is fatally tainted by an earlier, involuntary confession. (Slip op. at p. 4).
Hernandez was convicted and his convictions were affirmed by the New York appellate courts. He filed a federal habeas petition, which was denied in the district court. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals granted the habeas petition because the trial court’s response to the jury’s question was contrary to and involved an unreasonable application of Seibert, which was relevant not only to a court making admissibility determinations, but also to juries deciding voluntariness under New York law. (Slip op. at p. 7).
In a per curiam decision, SCOTUS granted the State’s petition for certiorari and reversed the Second Circuit’s judgment. The Court held that Hernandez had no federal right to have the jury evaluate the lawfulness of his confessions after the trial court admitted them. (Slip op. at p. 8). And assuming Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion clearly established a rule of federal law cognizable for purposes of habeas review, “that opinion established nothing about a jury’s determination of a confession’s legality. Seibert concerned a trial court’s ruling on a suppression motion, not a jury’s assessment of attenuation.” (Slip op. at p. 9).
Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson voted to deny the State’s petition for certiorari.