Docket 25-748
McCarthy v. Hernandez
DecidedJun 22, 2026
Per Curiamdecision
Source: CourtListener.
Court reverses federal order freeing convicted murderer, limits federal courts' power to second-guess state convictions
Impact3/10
What it does
The Court reversed the Second Circuit's order granting habeas relief to Pedro Hernandez, who was convicted of the 1979 murder of Etan Patz. It held that no clearly established federal law required the trial judge to instruct the jury on the "attenuation" doctrine — the legal rule about whether a later confession is tainted by an earlier one obtained without Miranda warnings. Because Seibert addressed only when a judge must suppress a confession, not what a jury must be told, the Second Circuit had no valid basis under AEDPA to overturn the state conviction.
Who benefits
State governments defending criminal convictions in federal habeas proceedings, where federal courts sought to expand the reach of Supreme Court precedents beyond their original context.
Who is affected
People convicted in state court who seek federal habeas relief by arguing that a trial judge gave incorrect or incomplete jury instructions on constitutional grounds not explicitly addressed by Supreme Court precedent.
Practical impact
State criminal convictions become harder to overturn in federal habeas proceedings when the prisoner's argument requires extending a Supreme Court precedent to a new procedural context — such as applying a suppression-hearing rule to jury instructions. Federal appeals courts are reminded that AEDPA limits them to enforcing the specific holdings of Supreme Court cases, not logical extensions of those holdings. Hernandez's conviction stands unless the state chooses to retry him, which the remand order leaves open.
Majority reasoning
The Court reasoned that under AEDPA, a federal court can only grant habeas relief if a state court's decision contradicted or unreasonably applied a "clearly established" holding of the Supreme Court — not a principle that a lower court infers or extends from existing rulings. The majority held that Missouri v. Seibert addressed only when a judge must suppress a confession obtained through a deliberate two-step interrogation tactic, and said nothing about what instructions a jury must receive. The Court further noted that the Federal Constitution does not require both a judge and a jury to evaluate the lawfulness of a confession — once a judge admits a confession, no federal law compels the jury to separately assess whether it was tainted. The majority also rejected the argument that because the jury itself asked about attenuation, that transformed Seibert into a clearly established rule governing jury instructions. Finally, the Court noted that the state courts had ruled the trial judge's response was correct under New York law, and federal habeas courts are not permitted to second-guess state courts' interpretations of their own state law.
Dissent reasoning
Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson did not write a separate dissenting opinion — they noted only that they would have denied the State's petition for certiorari, meaning they would have left the Second Circuit's ruling in place without the Supreme Court intervening. No written reasoning for that position appears in the opinion text.
Constitutional question
Did the Second Circuit exceed its authority under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) when it ordered a new trial for a state prisoner by applying Missouri v. Seibert — a case about when judges must throw out confessions — to require a jury instruction that no clearly established federal law actually mandates?
Precedent changed
The ruling does not explicitly overrule any prior case. It narrows the practical reach of Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), by confirming that Seibert's rule applies only to a judge's suppression-motion ruling, not to jury instructions on attenuation.