Paging Steven Levitt

Interesting defense:

A young woman woke up in her Central Park West sublet in July 2007 to find her fire-escape window open and two 15-year-old boys standing over her bed. One of them was pointing a handgun at her head.

Over the next few hours, the boys took turns raping the bound, gagged and terrified woman. They left, taking her laptop, cellphone, iPod, digital cameras and credit cards.

Now the boy with the gun — Steven Vasquez, according to DNA and his own police confession – is hoping for a break.

Vasquez’s lawyer says his client is mentally retarded due to childhood lead exposure, and she wants him tried in Family Court as a juvenile.

Lead paint in the West 129th Street home he grew up in left Vasquez so brain damaged he is unable to read.

“He’s basically the mental age of a kindergartner,” says his lawyer, Elsie Chandler, senior trial attorney with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.

See also: “Lead exposure in children linked to violent crime,” LA Times, May 28, 2008.