I didn't think I could be more disturbed and sickened by the murder of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky than I was already. Then I saw defense attorney Gerard Marrone on the news, explaining why he suddenly resigned from the case. Looking like a haunted man, Marrone said that as the father of three boys, he could not in good conscience continue to representKletzky's alleged killer, Levi Aron.
"I looked at my own children and there are no words. You see the victim and you feel so sad," said Marrone, who admitted to breaking down in tears over the "horrific" way Kletzky's life was ended.
"A little piece of me died when I got this case," he said.
That's when the gut-wrenching tragedy hit me on a whole new level. Criminal defense attorneys are tough guys; it comes with the territory. I've never seen someone in that line of work so openly repulsedby his client that he's forced to not only drop the case, but to drop all legal pretense and publicly react on a strictly human level: I'm too horrified by this man to defend him.
What did Marrone see in Aron's eyes that shook him so badly? Those were the last eyes Leiby Kletzky ever looked into. To think that a perfectly innocent child had to spend the final moments of his life under that cold, empty stare makes me doubt the very order of the universe. So I completely understand what Marrone meant when he said, "Before I got involved I believed in the divinity of human beings, and when I got involved I questioned the divinity of human beings."
Of course he had to give up the case. As parents, how can we carry on raising our children if we don't harbor even the faintest hope that there's some meaning behind human life? I admire Marrone's honestyand his decision to put his children first.
Do you agree that Marrone did the right thing when he gave up the Leiby Kletzky case?
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