Defense questions Eakin's testimony in teen's trial

EPHRATA ‹ On Friday a defense attorney for first-degree murder defendant Evan Savoie attempted to show jurors how details included in the damning testimony of teenager Jake Eakin were likely the result of suggestion.

Savoie's defense attorneys, Monty Hormel and Randy Smith, plan to convince jurors that Eakin's eye-witness account and confession to 13-year-old Craig Sorger's murder resulted from pressure by his own defense attorneys to accept a plea agreement that would reduce his prison sentence.

Both Eakin and Savoie, accused at 12 years old of killing Sorger on Feb. 15, 2003 at Ephrata's Oasis Park, are among the youngest murder defendants ever to be charged as adults.

The now 15-year-old Eakin, who maintained his innocence for more than two years while in custody, admitted to his role in Sorger's murder in April 2005. In the process of pleading guilty to complicity to second-degree murder, reduced from the original first-degree murder charge, Eakin implicated Savoie as the primary killer.

Savoie, 15, insists he is innocent.

Eakin and his defense attorney Alan White testified Friday in Grant County Superior Court during Savoie's trial.

White told jurors he and Eakin's other defense attorney, Michele Shaw, anticipated the boy being released when he was 18 years