8-Year-Old Murder Suspect to Go Home for Turkey Day

There’s good news for the 8-year-old boy police believe killed his father and another man. The third-grader, whose shocking video confession made national headlines, will be allowed to leave jail for 48 hours to spend Thanksgiving with his mother, a judge ruled yesterday. Another, perhaps bigger, break: Legal experts tell CNN that said video confession can’t possibly be used in court.

Analysts who saw the tape, in which the boy calmly describes shooting both his father, Vincent Romero, and another man—twice each—uniformly believe the confession will be inadmissible. The boy is never read his rights, and has no parent or guardian present. “The law enforcement conduct in this case is inexplicable,” says one analyst, "from interrogating a third-grader without the presence of a parent or other adult to releasing an inflammatory videotape before a trial."
(More murder stories.)