NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors said Friday they might appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to preserve a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, a bewildering case that went unsolved for decades.

A federal appeals court recently overturned the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, the former convenience store clerk who became a suspect over 30 years after the New York City first-grader vanished. The appeals court ordered him freed unless he's retried “within a reasonable period.”

Prosecutors asked the appeals court Friday to hold off sending the case back to a lower-level federal judge to set a retrial date.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office wrote that it is "currently determining whether to file a petition” to the Supreme Court this fall.

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