Saying his conscience prevented him from continuing, an attorney for the accused murderer of 8-year-old Brooklyn boy Leiby Kletzky has quit the case, a newspaper reported Friday.
Gerard Marrone, who was one of two lawyers defending Levi Aron, told The New York Daily News that he stepped down because of "the horrific way this boy was killed."
"I have three little boys," Marrone told the paper.
"You can't look at your kids and then look at yourself in the mirror, knowing that a little boy, who's close in age to my eldest son, was murdered so brutally," the Daily News quoted him as saying.
Boy taken while walking home
Aron, 35, was indicted this week over the abduction and death of Leiby, who disappeared while walking home from a Jewish day camp for the first time last week. The child got lost, asked a stranger later identified as Aron for directions and got into his car, surveillance video showed.
A city-wide search was under way to find the boy when police found the boy's body parts and arrested Aron two days later.
The New York City Medical Examiner's office said this week that Leiby was drugged with antipsychotic pills, a muscle relaxant, pain relievers, and Tylenol before he was smothered and later dismembered.
Aron, who has said he was "hearing voices," has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric exam.
If convicted, he could face life in prison without parole.
Read a redacted transcript of Aron's alleged confession here.