NEW YORK
Albany Times Union
Robert Gavin, Law Beat
Published 7:02 pm, Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Troy attorney Jay Hernandez could have employed a defense last week that might have convinced an Albany County jury that reasonable doubt existed in the sexual abuse case against disgraced former Albany deacon Angel Garcia.
But if Hernandez had used that defense, the jury might have convicted Garcia in an hour.
In the end, Garcia was convicted of sexually abusing a girl when she was 6 years old, in 2003.
Hernandez sought to convince the jury that Garcia’s accuser, now 17, concocted the sex abuse charge when she was in her midteens so her family, which is in the United States illegally, could stay in the country. Their daughter’s status as a sex-crime victim was grounds for remaining, he said.
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