Defense Lawyers Gear Up For Final Days Of Etan Patz Trial
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Defense lawyers in the trial of the man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 were laying out their strategy Tuesday for the remainder of the trial.
As WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported, the jury has yet to hear two key elements of the defense's case for Pedro Hernandez.
An expert will testify about the many documented cases of false confessions resulting in overturned convictions.
Hernandez confessed to police in 2012 that he offered Etan a soda to entice him into the basement of the SoHo bodega where he worked. Then, Hernandez said, he choked the boy and dumped him in a box with some curbside trash. Etan's body has never been found.
Defense lawyers say Hernandez's confession is fiction, dreamed up by a mentally ill man with a low IQ and a history of hallucinations and fueled by more than six hours of police questioning before Hernandez was read his rights.
The defense is also expected to present an alternate-killer theory, pointing at Jose Ramos, the now 70-year-old convicted pedophile who once confessed to being 90 percent sure he had picked up Etan in Washington Square Park on the day the boy vanished.
Ramos knew the child because a woman he dated had been hired by the Patzes to walk him home from school during a bus strike.
Ramos also admitted to sexually abusing the 4-year-old son of that girlfriend.
While he has denied killing Etan, a civil court found Ramos liable for the boy's death in 2004 after he stopped cooperating with questioning.