Prosecutors’ failure to disclose that hypnosis was used to help a witness recover memories of alleged sex abuse as a child does not invalidate a defendant’s guilty plea, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday refused to grant the habeas petition sought by Jesse Friedman, who was seeking to undo his 1988 guilty plea in a molestation case that rocked Nassau County and became the subject of the documentary “Capturing the Friedmans.”