A Profile of the Attorney Representing Levi Aron, Suspect in Death of Leiby Kletzky

September 7th, 2011

Here.

Ms. McCann chose to defend Levi Aron, a hardware clerk from Brooklyn who is accused of a crime that gripped the city this summer: the kidnapping, killing and dismembering of Leiby Kletzky, 8, who got lost walking to meet his parents in July in the Hasidic Jewish enclave of Borough Park.

“People assume I’m O.K. with a young boy being murdered because I represent the defendant,” Ms. McCann, 30, said recently in her office in Garden City, N.Y., which she opened in March after four years of practicing criminal defense law for a local firm. “To me, that’s pretty vicious. They have to understand, I’m not all right with people being murdered or with crime. I’m all right with defending constitutional rights.

“If he’s guilty, he will be convicted. And that’s it. But my God,” she added with gritted teeth, “it’s going to be legally.”

This attorney previously got in trouble for some comments she publicly made about Aron.

The judge chastised the two for briefly discussing the case on their Facebook pages, and for defending their client in this public forum. (He even scolded Mr. Bazile for misspelling “canon,” as it relates to ethics. “Two N’s means a cannon that shoots at something,” he said.)

Ms. McCann explained that she used Facebook to respond to a group that was harassing her: “It was the quickest, easiest way to resolve my issues so the phone lines aren’t clogged up. I have a business to run, Your Honor.”

Let’s see if this comes back in a few years on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim.