The man convicted of killing a six-year-old boy in Manhattan in 1979 should be freed or retried, a court has ruled.

Pedro Hernandez, who was convicted of killing Etan Patz in 2017 after a decades-long police investigation, has had his guilty verdict overturned.

A federal appeals court took issue with how a jury note was handled during Hernandez’s second trial in 2017. His first, in 2015, ended with a deadlocked jury.

Hernandez has been serving a life sentence since his conviction.

Etan disappeared on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop.