Clinical Associate Professor Cheryl Bader appeared in a CBS New York video where she discussed the murder trial of a New Jersey man accused of killing his childhood friend.
Opening statements started Wednesday in the murder trial of a New Jersey man accused of killing his childhood friend and dumping her body in the ocean in December 2016.
Prosecutors say it was a scheme to steal money the victim’s deceased mother left her.
Liam McAtasney, 21, allegedly strangled Sarah Stern, 19, during a robbery at her Neptune City home and then, with the help of his roommate, tossed her body off the Belmar Bridge on the Jersey Shore.
Her body was never found, reports CBS2’s Meg Baker.
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Cheryl Bader, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey and current law professor at Fordham University, says the lack of a body typically creates a “real uphill battle” for prosecutors, but that’s not the case here.“I actually think in this case, the prosecutor has a lot of key, important evidence. And I actually think it’s the defense attorney that’s going to have the uphill battle here,” Bader said. “That’s one of the key pieces of evidence, is that they have the testimony of a cooperating witness who was the roommate of the defendant and he took a plea and said ‘I helped dispose of this body and threw this body into the river.’ The defense attorney is going to have to face why would somebody come forward and actually say they disposed of a body and plead guilty if they were lying.”
“Also, there’s a confession. So another friend taped a confession that the defendant gave that described how he actually sat there and watched her die,” Bader said. “That’s going to be pretty compelling testimony, when they hear the words of the defendant himself.”