Was James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Rev. Martin Luther King, the real shooter or was he a patsy like Lee Harvey Oswald?

James Earl Ray was indeed a patsy. This was entirely orchestrated to plant evidence of his involvement and then to manipulate him and keep him in a state of confusion so he was unable to help himself. And this allowed the cover-up to be successful. He was manipulated and distorted to the extent he was felt to be mentally unstable. This was not viewed as sufficient to judge him as being not culpable, but it was enough to convince authorities nothing he said was of evidentiary value, nor could it be trusted and considered to be even useful information to explore or verify. This made him a defenseless and vulnerable sitting duck, with no means to counter the charges or to plead for mercy in terms of the mitigating factors involved, which were highly significant.