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 old, serving a total of six years of actual incarceration under a plea deal.

A judge decided Eakin would be locked up for more than 14 years. The sentence was six years longer than recommended by prosecutors, who gained their most important witness against Savoie in the plea deal. Now, Eakin will be headed for adult prison at age 18, instead of home.

White said Eakin's parents were not present or invited during his statement to authorities in anticipation of a plea bargain.

Still, White explained that Eakin's sentence is being appealed in a "last resort effort," hoping for less time for the now confessed accomplice.

From the witness stand on Friday, Eakin continued to tell jurors how he and Savoie beat Sorger to death. Eakin said he clubbed Sorger with a branch in a wooded area of the park following Savoie's initial and bloody attack that left the victim motionless on the ground.

In testimony from the previous week, Eakin confessed to hitting Sorger with the branch about 20 times. Savoie, Eakin testified, struck Sorger 30 times or more with his hand, causing the victim to bleed profusely from the head and neck.

However, under questioning from Smith, Eakin admitted those numbers were not his own. In fact, Eakin testified that he used those numbers because he was told Sorger suffered about 20 blunt-force injuries and more than 30 stab wounds.

Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell questioned Eakin about the same numbers, suggesting Eakin had simply learned the results of Sorger's autopsy.

Smith, though, continued emphasizing to jurors that Eakin used the numbers based on suggestion.

"Did your attorney show you the autopsy report?" Smith asked.

"I can't remember," Eakin replied.

Smith referred Eakin to terms and phrases the boy has used during his testimony.

"Why is it that you call the area (in Oasis Park) a crime scene?" Smith continued. He then asked if Eakin was told that, too.

"I told myself," Eakin returned sharply.

During Eakin's earlier testimony, Smith focused on Eakin's use of the term "glade" to describe where the three boys were playing in the secluded area of the park and Sorger's dead body was eventually found by police.

"Why did you call it a 'glade'?" Smith quizzed Eakin, who admitted being unable to read before being held in juvenile detention. "What's a glade?"

Eakin didn't know.

"Do you have difficulty sometimes remembering exactly what happened?" Smith asked.

Eakin agreed he has difficulty remembering, but corrected the attorney, saying he does not get help from others.

Eakin again testified he never recalled seeing Savoie hold a knife as he struck Sorger.

Outside the courthouse, Eakin's grandmother, Phyllis LaMear, who has followed the court proceedings closely and watched as Eakin has grown nine inches while in jail, said she was proud of him for testifying.