Judge: Potatoes can't be evidence in Etan Patz murder trial
NEW YORK - A New York judge says 50 pounds of potatoes and a produce box can't be used as evidence in the murder trial of the man accused of killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979.
Judge Maxwell Wiley on Thursday denied the defense request, saying it would raise too much speculation for jurors in Pedro Hernandez's trial.
Hernandez, now 54, told authorities he choked Etan in a basement, put the body in a bag and a banana box, and dumped it about two blocks away. The body was never recovered.
Defense attorneys are trying to show the confession was made up by a mentally ill man. They say he was too weak to have carried a box that far and asked to bring in 50 pounds of potatoes and a produce box for jurors to demonstrate the weight of the body.
Prosecutors say the confession is accurate, and that medical records show Etan weighed far less than 50 pounds. They argued that the method for showing how heavy the box would be is unscientific and should not be shown to jurors because it would be wrong
On a missing-child poster, Etan's weight was listed as 50 pounds, but prosecutors say the measurement was a mistake made by frantic parents, and medical records from just a few months before Etan vanished have the boy weighing about 37 pounds. His mother testified that he was very small for his age.
Hernandez made the surprising confession in 2012 to authorities who were interviewing him based on a tip from a relative. No physical evidence has been recovered, but at least five people have testified that over the years, Hernandez said he had killed a child in New York City. He moved from SoHo, in Manhattan, where he had been staying with his sister and brother-in-law shortly after Etan disappeared, to New Jersey, where he has been living ever since - most recently in Maple Shade.
Etan's parents helped galvanize the national missing-children's movement. May 25, the day he disappeared, is National Missing Children's Day.