Patz Trial Judge to Decide If Former Suspect Will Testify

By ELIZABETH ELIZALDE

The judge in the Etan Patz murder trial said on Tuesday that he would decide by the end of the week whether to allow a convicted child molester who once was a suspect in the case appear as a witness.

Defense attorneys for the defendant Pedro Hernandez have been trying since the beginning of the case to to convince Justice Maxwell Wiley to allow José Ramos, 71, a convicted child molester, serving more than 25 years in prison, to take the stand.

The request sparked a heated discussion between the prosecutors and defense attorneys.

“He (Ramos) has nothing to lose by testifying,” said defense lawyer, Harvey Fishbein in Manhattan Supreme Court.

If Hernandez’s lawyers get their way, evidence of Ramos’s child molester past and confessions might create doubt in jurors over whether Hernandez is the right man to convict.

Ramos was a prime suspect in Patz’s disappearance when police arrested him in 1982. He told investigators that he didn’t kill the boy and refused to cooperate throughout the investigation, but later decided he would if he were given immunity.

Patz disappeared on May 25, 1979, while walking to a school bus stop in his SoHo neighborhood. According to investigators, there is no forensic evidence linking Hernandez to the boy’s death. The boy’s body was never found.

Ramos confessed to investigators that he picked up a boy in Washington Square Park the day Patz vanished but denied he had nothing to do with the SoHo case though the convicted pedophile had a link to Patz through his girlfriend who was Etan’s babysitter.

Ramos admitted to investigators that he sexually assaulted his girlfriend’s four-year-old son. “He abused anyone within his reach,” Fishbein said.

“I think Ramos is a pedophile,” said lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzi-Orbon. She opposes having Ramos testify, arguing that his testimony would be “utterly irrelevant.”

A psychologist was slated to testify for the defense on false confessions, a point Fishbein and his team of lawyers want to prove. Hernandez told investigators that he strangled Patz in a 2012 videotape confession. His lawyers argue that he has a personality disorder that limits his ability to distinguish between reality and illusion.

“The point is to let the jury know that false confessions exist,” Fishbein told the judge.