Matthew Higa does not dispute that an eyewitness saw him throw 23-month-old Cyrus Belt off a pedestrian bridge onto the H-1 freeway on Jan. 17, 2008. Nor does he dispute telling police that he did it.

However, Higa claims Cyrus was already dead by the time the toddler hit the freeway pavement.

And his lawyer, Randy Oyama, during Higa's trial last week in Circuit Court on a murder charge, is pointing the finger at the man who at the time was the boyfriend of Cyrus' mother.

Oyama said Cyrus' mother, Nancy Chanco, said in a television news interview that images captured by a freeway traffic camera indicated her son was already dead before the fall.

“;There is no freeway camera. ... The medical examiner did not tell her that this happened. So I'm thinking she may have gotten that impression from someone else, perhaps the person she was with all day,”; Oyama said this week.

That person is Shane Mizusawa.

Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario prevented Oyama from asking Chanco whether Mizusawa told her Cyrus was already dead because Chanco had already said she never mentioned anything about a freeway camera on television and that police never told her about a freeway camera.

All that's left for Del Rosario to consider before rendering a verdict is the lawyers' closing arguments scheduled for Thursday.

Higa, 25, is facing a mandatory life prison term with the possibility for parole for allegedly causing Cyrus' death.

Deputy Medical Examiner Gayle Suzuki said Cyrus died from the fall onto the freeway. She said she found no objective evidence to indicate the boy was dead before the fall.

Defense expert witness Dr. James Navin testified that the absence of bruises doesn't mean Cyrus didn't suffer critical or fatal brain injury before the fall. There have been cases in which the bruises appeared after death, he said.

Suzuki said because Cyrus was not an infant, much more force would have been required to cause shaken baby-type injuries.