Accused child killer Levi Aron will stand trial in Brooklyn despite his lawyers’ pleas to move the proceedings to Suffolk County or the Bronx, a court ruled on Tuesday.
Lawyers for the Kensington man accused this summer of kidnapping, killing and carving up 8-year-old Hasidic Leiby Kletzky of Borough Park, asked for the change of venue, arguing that media coverage in Brooklyn — fed, he said, by propaganda provided by District Attorney Charles Hynes and the police department — had caused too much bias among prospective jurors.
“The DA’s office and the police have fallen all over themselves to poison the public’s mind against the defendant,” said Howard Greenberg, one of Aron’s lawyers. “I wanted to try this case in Brooklyn in front of 12 fiercely independent jurors.”
Aron’s lawyers say that the former plumbing supply clerk is crazy and that cops forced him to write his hand-scrawled confession shortly after his arrest in July.
Aron will appear in court on Dec. 21 for pretrial motions, but the opening arguments will not start until early next year.
Reach reporter Dan MacLeod at dmacleod@cnglocal.com or by calling him at (718) 260-4507. You can also follow his Tweets at @dsmacleod.
