He is ostensibly perfectly normal. He met his ex-wife on an internet dating service. He loved singing Lionel Ritchie and his Facebook profile indicated a fondness for Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry, Levi Aron, the “singing butcher” of Brooklyn, also admitted to murdering and dismembering eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky.
---Justice Firetog has criticized Ms. McCann for discussing the case on her office’s Facebook page. With Facebook groups like “Levi Aron Deserves the Death Penalty” harassing her, Ms. McCann said she felt obligated to protect her client’s image for a potential jury pool. In her trial preparations, she has learned about the Hasidic community in Borough Park and has also learned a new word. “Shiska,” Ms. McCann said, mispronouncing the Yiddish word, shiksa, for a non-Jewish woman. Ms. McCann does not apologize for what she does not know. Or the profession she chose. “This is what I do,” she said. “You kill people, you call me.” --- Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/nyregion/lawyer-for-levi-aron-defends-her-clients-and-herself.html?pagewanted=all image:http://www.crimeusa.com/murder_inc.html
…More than a week after Leiby was abducted, drugged, smothered to death and dismembered, police are still wading through Aron’s Kensingston home trying to find more evidence, focusing on whether this was the first child he had killed. Police took bags marked “kids pants” and “blue child’s spoon, pink cup” from the attic apartment yesterday, and will run the items through the DNA database to see if they match any other cases. “There were two boxes in a closet, and they appear to have been there for a while,” a source told the Post.
Last week, neighbors accused Aron of having tried to kidnap children in the past, and investigators seemed unconvinced that this could have been Aron’s first murder. Although Aron wrote a detailed written confession, he pled not guilty to first-degree murder and kidnapping charges, and his remaining lawyer has made it clear that they will pursue an insanity defense. Legal sources told the News that Aron is eligible for the federal death penalty because he took Leiby across state lines… “That crime is punishable by up to life in prison or the death penalty,” said former federal prosecutor Morris Fodeman. Read More:http://gothamist.com/2011/07/22/child_murder_suspects_attorney_resi.php
---The authorities do not want a repeat of the scenes outside the 1989 execution of the serial killer Ted Bundy, when tasteless folk waved miniature electric chairs and frying pans in the air, while vindictively chanting: 'Fry, Bundy, fry.' So no cooking utensils are permitted. Officials have even made a list of exactly what will be allowed in the roped-off area outside the prison: a candle screened against the wind, a phone, a Bible and - every hypochondriac American's right - a few bottles of pills. Next to the demonstrators will be a giant encampment of satellite dishes, spreading into the front gardens of several local people who have rather sensibly rented the space out to the mighty networks. ...The name of this place - Terre Haute - means 'High Ground'. The joke goes that, since the surroundings are entirely flat, it must be the moral high ground. And why not? Is there anyone who really, passionately, deeply thinks that it will be wrong to let 33-year-old McVeigh ride the fatal needle of lethal injection, take his dose of deadly chemicals and leave the world several decades ahead of schedule? Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-124917/Ive-seen-men-death-electric-chair-lethal-injection----I-know-Timothy-McVeigh-deserves.html#ixzz1XWXIPNe3 image:http://www.inquisitr.com/132585/ted-bundys-dna-to-be-added-to-fbi-database-used-for-cold-cases/
besides the civil criminal legal rub which could see Levi electrocuted much like the Jewish gangsters of the 1930′s, there is also the question of his legal status, a Dante like present between inferno and purgatory that is predated by an even more ancient Judaic law. In principle,most modern strains of Judaism are not supportive of the death penalty. However,The Old Testament mandates the death penalty for offenses, thirty six in all, somewhat ironically 2 x 18 ( which is the number of chai-life!). Among these are murder in various degrees, kidnapping, adultery, even incest. In 1979,Conservative Judaism’s Central Conference of American Rabbis asserted that capital punishment was repugnant in practice and concept devoid of any indice that it served as a deterrent to crime.
…I was just reading that it is statistically more likely to be put to death by the Texas governor Rick Perry than to to die on an air crash or on a terrorist act. on the issue of the death penalty the committee on conservative religious judaism concluded “we regard all forms of capital punishment as barbaric and obsolete…” they were based on the halachic ruling of maimonides in the 11th century: “it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death”. Maimonides in turn based himself on the talmudic story that says: “rabbi Akiba and rabbi Tarfon say: had we been in the sanhedrin (court of law) none would ever have been put to death”. in that same spirit, Martin Buber pleaded that even Adlolf Eichman’s life be spared during his trial in Jerusalem. the death penalty is an act contrary to the basic definition of being human. Read More:http://dialogicalecology.blogspot.com/2011/09/dialogue-actualized.html
Image: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Eichmann_trial_1961_in_glass_box.jpg ---Similar reasoning prompted Britain's Jewish publisher, Victor Gollancz, to suggest that Eichmann be sent to a kibbutz (collective farm) in Israel, "where he would live in an atmosphere of Christian (or, rather, Jewish) love, and he might learn the right way of living and repent his appalling sins." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829108,00.html#ixzz1XZPFYFSS
In the North American Indian tradition, acts of murder like Levi’s are removed from the concept of ”crime” and place within the realm of a social problem. Murder is a social issue where the locus of discussion is viewed within a larger context of the community….
From 1962: For two hours in Buber’s house on Love of Zion Street, Ben-Gurion listened while Buber pleaded with him to commute the Eichmann death sentence. Society is merely a group of persons, argued Buber, and when it kills one man, it is killing part of itself. “Who gave society the right to kill itself?” he asked. “Society does not have such plenipotentiary rights.” (Israel has no capital punishment except for high treason in wartime, war crimes against humanity or the Jewish people.) In Eichmann’s case, Buber added, execution would nurture another antichrist myth and permit a second-rate individual to symbolize the tragedy of European Jewry; his death would only offer easy, vicarious expiation to the guilty.*
Last week, when newspapers learned of Buber’s plea for mercy, public reaction in Israel was overwhelmingly against him. Read More:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829108,00.html#ixzz1XZOF9L7K
---The cringe-inducing crooner would sit in front of his computer for hours, logged on to a karaoke website called SingSnap, singing with strangers, Barsky said. He loved singing tunes by Maroon 5 and Josh Groban - and his all-time favorite song is "Time" by Hootie & the Blowfish. Chillingly, that song contains the lyric: "Time, I don't understand; children killing in the streets." Barsky said he spends hours in the clink thinking about how someone with no known history of v
nce could commit such a depraved act. "I loved the guy. He was a good person," Barsky said, adding he thought at first Aron was too stupid to abduct the boy off a Borough Park, Brooklyn, street and kill him with a drug-laced tuna sandwich. "Why did he kill the child?"---Read More:http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/08/levi-aron-borderline-retarded-friend-says-789.html
He was married in 2004 for just one year to Diana Diunov, 38, a woman later convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges, court records show. Shortly after this break-up, Aron met his next wife, Debby Kivel, 34, on the Jewish dating website SawYouAtSinai.com. They got married in 2006 and he moved from New York to Memphis, Tennessee, to join her and her two children. They divorced in 2007.She said he was injured aged nine in a bicycle accident and has been nervous around people ever since, but ‘loved children’.Read More:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014727/Leiby-Kletzky-dead-Butcher-Brooklyn-Levi-Aron-reminds-neighbours-Charles-Manson.html
ADDENDUM:
Wherever the reader may stand on the issue of capital punishment, do you think death penalty protesters would be out in full force picketing against the execution of Louis Lepke Buchalter if it were to take place today? Without disavowing their principled opposition to capital punishment, might not quite a few of them elect to forgo a public demonstration in the case of the chief Murder Inc. executioner?…
---Aron’s was little trouble to authorities prior to this week as the only fault on his record was a summons for public urination last year. But this quiet public man had a Facebook page with 220 friends and listed his favourite TV shows as ‘Glee’ and ‘The Office’, reported the New York Post. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014727/Leiby-Kletzky-dead-Butcher-Brooklyn-Levi-Aron-reminds-neighbours-Charles-Manson.html#ixzz1XWYnCRl9 image:http://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/L/Little%20Caesar.htm
…Certainly Lepke’s criminal history would constitute a challenge putting to the test the faith of death penalty foes that the state and society ought not emulate killers. Buchalter headed for six years the national crime syndicate’s enforcement arm– dubbed Murder, Inc. by newspapers. The body count reputed directly to Lepke himself has been figured at as many as 100 while the body count attributed to the executioners under his direction has been estimated in the hundreds, perhaps even a thousand. Other estimates put the figures for Lepke personally and Murder Inc. as a group considerably lower yet still horrendous. Read More:http://www.correctionhistory.org/singsing/ronaronsjewsofsingsing/lepke.html…
…”The building that housed the electric chair was referred to as the Death House. It was a prison within a prison. There were 24 cells, plus an additional three cells for women. It had its own hospital, kitchen, visiting room, and exercise yard. The section where the prisoners spent their last day was called the Dance Hall. This pre-execution chamber was connected by a corridor, which was called the Last Mile, to a room where the chair was located.” Read More:http://www.correctionhistory.org/singsing/ronaronsjewsofsingsing/chair.html
Read More:http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/07/hasidic-amateur-detective-credited-with-finding-child-killer-678.html
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“He didn’t talk about anything except karaoke and the songs he was going to sing – not women, not anything.”
Aron, whose lawyer claims he hears voices in his head, was arraigned Thursday in the murder and dismemberment of helpless 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky – a gruesome slaying that infuriated the city. Aron was deemed fit to stand trial.
As police interrogated Aron after collaring him at his Kensington home July 13 – and finding Leiby’s feet in the freezer – he called Barsky his “best friend,” court papers reveal. He also told detectives his life’s dream was to be a contestant on “American Idol,” the papers say. Barsky said Aron used to drive him to karaoke parties he would host. After a few years, Aron tried to emcee the gigs – and was an absolute train wreck. ”He has no personality,” Barsky said. “He had to learn how to talk to people. ”He loved to sing the songs, but he can’t sing. He has a terrible voice!” Read More:http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/08/levi-aron-borderline-retarded-friend-says-789.html
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The truth is that there is not, and will not, be proper limitations on the use of capital punishment.
In fact, we have seen that the use of capital punishment in the United States is so void of limitations that there have actually been innocent individuals sentenced to die. Indeed, since 1970, 77 people have been released from death row due to evidence of their innocence. In 1992, researchers Radelet and Bedau found 23 cases since 1900 where innocent people were actually executed. It was Justice William J. Brennan, who, in 1994 said, “Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.”
While the absence of limitations has caused innocent individuals to be sentenced to death, we are also deeply concerned about the significantly higher rate of death penalty convictions for minorities than for whites. A study that was recently conducted in Philadelphia confirms this. The study found that black defendants faced odds of receiving a death sentence that were 3.9 times higher than other similarly situated defendants.
In the most rational, ethical terms, capital punishment makes little sense. In order to prove a crime is wrong, capital punishment offers a crime in itself. Read More:http://rac.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=539&pge_prg_id=15230&pge_id=2396
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Eichmann’s execution, explained Buber last week, may only give Germany’s youth an easy way of escaping the guilt feelings they harbored about their elders’ actions. Yet these guilt feelings, he is convinced, were healthy, and helped to revive humanism in Germany. The inner struggle over Germany’s conscience, Buber believes, is part of a climactic, worldwide tug of war between the forces of “human” man and “antihuman” man that transcends political boundaries. “The arming for the final battle of the Homo humanus against the Homo contrahumanus started in the depth” of the heart, Buber said years ago. “The battlefront is split into as many individual fronts as there are nations, and those who stand at one of the individual fronts do not know the others. Dawn still shrouds the struggle, but on its outcome depends whether the human race will eventually become a human entity.” In that context, said Buber last week, Eichmann’s hanging was a “mistake of historical dimensions. I cannot prove it now,” he said, “but our children will. They will see how great a tragic error it was.” ( 1962)
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873611,00.html#ixzz1XZPoGlO2
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