A New York federal appeals court ruled Monday to overturn the guilty verdict for the man convicted in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, the Jewish 6-year-old whose kidnapping and presumed murder changed America’s approach to missing-child cases.

A US appeals court has ruled that the man convicted in the 1979 murder and disappearance of a six-year-old boy in New York City should receive a new trial, or be released.

The appeals court overturned the conviction because of an issue involving how the trial judge handled a jury note during Hernandez’s 2017 trial — his second.