Etan murder claim raises moral dilemma

Decades before he was arrested in one of the country's most haunting missing-child cases, Pedro Hernandez told people he had killed a child, police and relatives say.

His alleged remarks in the 1980s made their way just last month to New York City police, who say Hernandez then told them he'd strangled Etan Patz, 6, in 1979. Although one relative says she tried to tell police in New Jersey years ago that he'd confessed in a prayer group to a child slaying, others apparently stayed silent.

It's not yet clear what will become of a murder case that hinges on confessions from a suspect who is schizophrenic, according to his lawyer.

Regardless, the account of loved ones and acquaintances hearing his disturbing claim long ago raises a sensitive legal and philosophical question: What's a person supposed to do with information like that?

In the U.S., relatives, friends and bystanders may well not be legally required to report such information to authorities. But ethics experts say people have a moral duty to do so.

One of "the most commonly encountered ethical dilemmas in life comes when you're aware of somebody else doing something wrong," says ethics professor Kirk O. Hanson, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

Etan disappeared going to his school bus stop in May 1979. Hernandez, now 51, was then a teenage stock clerk working at a bodega near Etan's home.

Hernandez is being held in a psychiatric jail ward while authorities seek additional evidence and doctors evaluate whether he's mentally healthy enough for court. He hasn't entered any plea.

Investigators have slim prospects of finding physical evidence against Hernandez, who said he dumped the boy's boxed, bagged body in the trash.

Authorities are looking to other elements that could undergird the case against Hernandez, including his '80s statements to a southern New Jersey prayer circle. The leader at the time, Tomas Rivera, has said Hernandez told the group he killed a child in New York City.

Rivera said he didn't feel it was his place to contact police but told Hernandez's relatives they should.

Norma Hernandez said she heard secondhand about her brother's alleged prayer-circle confession and reported it to the Camden, N.J., police years ago. Camden police have said they have no record of the report.

She might not have been legally required to report what she'd heard.

People who aren't doctors, psychologists or educators usually aren't prosecuted under the law requiring reports of abuse to children, said Camden County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Jason Laughlin. And the statute of limitations for such violations is normally only a year.

Still, it's a difficult decision.

Empathy for the victim's family should tip the scale, says Hanson, the California ethics professor. "Your obligation to the people who are suffering," he said, "outweighs your obligation to your kin."