Brooklyn butcher Levi Aron will pursue an insanity defense at trial, with his lawyers trying to prove cops pressured the wacko into copping to the dismemberment killing. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Howard Greenberg, an experienced attorney newly added to the villified killer’s bumbling defense team, came out swinging with the revelation following a brief hearing in Brooklyn Supreme Court Monday morning.
“This is a very simple case,” he said. “Levi Aron is either evil or he’s crazy.”
Aron, 35, is charged with the July kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of 8-year-old Borough Park boy Leiby Kletzky, whom he abducted off the street as he got lost while walking home from camp.
Aron was found competent to stand trial in an initial psychiatric exam, but his lawyers intend to prove he was full-blown insane when he committed the shocking crime.
Greenberg slammed the detailed confession his client gave to the authorities after cops found the boy’s feet inside his freezer. The lawyer charged that Aron “said what they told him to say.”
He said Aron is so off-his-rocker that he would have said anything if someone pressed him.
“My opinion is that you can get this guy to admit he shot Kennedy if you spend enough time with him,” said the lawyer. “The statements they attribute to him will come back to bite the prosecution in the tuckus.”
Aron was still on Rikers Island during Monday’s court appearance but his face was shown via video conference. The judge set a new court date for Dec. 21.
Justice Neal Firetog denied a defense motion to recuse the assistant district attorney on the case, Julie Rendelman, who conducted the videotaped interview with Aron.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who attended the hearing after speaking with Leiby’s father, criticized the defense strategy as “really outrageous.”
The victim’s family is having a difficult time as it is, he said, especially during the just-concluded Jewish holidays.
“Someone was missing from the table, someone was missing from shul,” Hikiknd said.
