Psych Evaluation Finds Levi Aron Has “Disorder;” Daily News Slams Insanity Defense

A man charged with abducting, killing and dismembering an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy is confused and apathetic, a “practically blank” personality whose younger sister died while institutionalized with schizophrenia, according to a psychiatric evaluation obtained by The Associated Press.

The court-ordered evaluation of Levi Aron found him fit to stand trial on murder charges in the death of Leiby Kletzky. Details in the report from a psychiatrist and psychologist at Kings County Hospital show the 35-year-old suspect is deeply troubled, and has given authorities conflicting accounts of his life and his mental and physical history.

A psychologist diagnosed him with an adjustment disorder and a personality disorder with schizoid features.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by disintegration of thought processes and diminished emotional responsiveness. A person is more likely to have it if a close family member, such as his sister who died, has it.

“His mood is neutral, practically blank,” the psychologist wrote. “The only time he seems to show any emotional response is when he is asked difficult questions about the reason for his incarceration.”

An autopsy on the boy found he had been given several drugs, including quetiapine, which is used to treat symptoms of schizophrenia.

The evaluation offers little details on a possible motive and does not delve much into the crime. Aron admitted knowing the charges against him are serious, and acknowledged that people are angry with him.

“He states he did not wish the boy harm but that he ‘panicked,’” the psychologist wrote.

Aron, 35, has pleaded not guilty to murder and kidnapping in the death of Kletzky, who got lost walking home from day camp on July 11. The boy’s severed feet were found in Aron’s refrigerator, the rest of the body was discovered in pieces in a suitcase elsewhere in Brooklyn.

During the evaluation, Aron, dressed in regulation pajamas and “well-groomed,” gave conflicting accounts of most details of his life, including how many siblings he has and whether he sought mental health care previously. He said he suffered a head injury as a child, though it wasn’t clear exactly when.

“Mr. Aron is unable (unwilling?) to state categorically whether or not he was in prior psychiatric treatment,” the psychologist wrote.

Aron also was unclear about the voices he says he heard during and after the boy’s death. He said he doesn’t remember anything stressful happening when he began to hear the voice.

“He admitted to us that he began to hear a voice talking to him approximately one year ago, but cannot make out what it says,” according to the psychiatrist, who had recommended Aron remain at Bellevue Hospital. A judge disagreed and Aron is now being held without bail at a medical wing at Riker’s Island in solitary confinement.

“He says he was too embarrassed to mention it to anyone,” the report said.

Aron told the psychologist the voice does not command him to do anything, but he told doctors after his arrest that the voice commanded him to hurt himself and others, according to the records.

The psychiatric evaluation was ordered specifically to determine whether Aron would be fit for trial. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office had no comment.

Aron’s lawyer, Pierre Bazile, said the records obtained by the AP were accurate.

“The evaluators agreed with us that Mr. Aron suffers from some psychiatric disorders and right now we are investigating whether or not his disorders are sufficient to meet the not guilty by reason of mental disease or mental defect threshold,” he said.

The records filled in a few blanks about Aron’s life, which was lived mostly alone except for a few impulsive decisions, such as moving to Memphis to get married to a woman he met online and had met in person only twice. They divorced after a few years. Aron was employed as a hardware clerk, and earlier as a supermarket worker and a caterer.

Aron spent much of his time online, and made audio and video recordings of himself doing karaoke. He lived alone in a home owned by his father and step mother, his brother lived in a separate apartment. His mother died about seven years ago.

Both the psychiatrist and psychologist described Aron as reserved, apathetic, sad and cooperative.

“He did report having nightmares since the incident which led to his arrest and having difficulty ‘realizing what happened,’” the psychologist wrote

Kletzky, lost walking home from camp, met Aron on the street and asked for help, prosecutors said. It was the first time the little boy was allowed to walk alone, and he was supposed to travel about seven blocks to meet his parents.

A pretrial hearing is set for Oct. 14.

Daily News Op-Ed: Stop the Insane Insanity Defense

Levi Aron, who has confessed to kidnapping, murdering and dismembering 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky in Brooklyn last month in a crime that horrified the entire city, has one last resort: to claim that he was insane when he committed the crime.

Having just been found competent enough to eventually stand trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court, Aron and his lawyers will likely now point to a history of “psychiatric disorders,” including hearing voices, in an attempt to plead NGRI (“not guilty by reason of insanity”). Yesterday, the Associated Press obtained the report of an evaluation that showed Aron to have an “apathetic” mood – as well as a schizophrenic sister, now deceased.

The insanity defense in criminal trials is nothing new. The Babylonian Talmud had this to say some 1,500 years ago: “It is an ill thing to knock against a deaf-mute, an imbecile or a minor. He that wounds them is culpable, but if they wound him they are not culpable.”

But even the Talmudic rabbis would have been baffled by the modern version of the insanity defense, which has become less about compassion for the mentally ill than a loophole for criminals to escape through.

To start with, no one seems to be able to define “insanity” unequivocally. Insanity in a courtroom is not the same as the colloquial expression (i.e., “he is nuts”). To add to the confusion, it is equally distinct from the way psychiatrists use the term – which, in fact, they rarely do.

Indeed, when it comes to the antiquated insanity defense, the legal profession is completely at odds with modern psychiatry, which recognizes that “insanity” is an inaccurate term to use in describing an incredibly wide spectrum of mental states, not all of which should automatically get a criminal off the judicial hook.

The legal system applies three tests to determine whether a suspect should be held not responsible for his or her actions:

* Diminished capacity. Can the suspect tell right from wrong? Does he or she lack substantial capacity to “know and appreciate” the criminality or wrongfulness of the alleged conduct?

* Criminal intent. Did the suspect intend to act in the way that he or she did?

* Irresistible impulse. Was the suspect unable to control his or her behavior?

But many mental health scholars today regard these broad “tests” as subjective, biased and even ludicrous. What matters is whether the defendant’s perception or understanding of reality is impaired. This so-called “reality test” is the only true measure of “insanity,” critics say.

A perpetrator should go unpunished – and be hospitalized instead – only if he is found to be completely divorced from reality by diagnosticians from both sides, a far cry from today’s insanity defense.

But the rigorous criterion of a reality test applies only to psychopaths such as Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner, whose reality was subverted by apparently intense bouts of psychosis (delusions, hearing voices, etc.). In these extreme instances, a criminal may be so thoroughly unaware of reality that his or her mental state really does deserve courtroom consideration.

All others should be deemed both sane and culpable for all intents and purposes, insist most psychiatrists.

Moreover, a perception and understanding of reality can co-exist even with the severest forms of mental illness. Even when a suspect is deemed mentally ill, as long as he or she passes the reality test, that suspect should be held criminally responsible.

The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, accused of killing 17 young men and boys, pleaded NGRI in 1992. Despite obvious mental health troubles, however, the jury rightly found that he was responsible for his actions and sentenced him to more than 900 years in prison.

Consider, also, the cases of the Norway shooter, Anders Behring Breivik or Unabomber Ted Kaczynski: Both have coherent world-views, a consistent internal logic and highly complex ethical codes. Their philosophy may be repellent or outlandish, but that alone does not make them insane.

Breivik, for instance, is not delusional. Yet his lawyer is seriously considering using the insanity defense.

This is not to say that a defendant’s mental state at the time of the crime is irrelevant: He or she may have held mistaken (even delusional) beliefs or may have misread the situation, may have been misinformed, may have been under the influence of mind-altering drugs, may have lacked criminal intent, may have been unable to tell right from wrong or to control his or her urges.

A troubled mental state can be accounted for during the sentencing, but the all-purpose insanity defense is an outdated tactic that poorly serves justice and science alike.