Attorneys invoke Jewish law in case of accused baby killer
MARILYN SILVERSTEIN
Jewish Exponent
PHILADELPHIA - Attorneys for a teenage murder suspect have invoked Jewish law in a bid to prevent her parents from testifying. The action by the attorneys for Amy Grossberg raises questions about the standing of halachah, Jewish law, vis-…-vis the statutes of a sovereign state.
Grossberg, 19, and her boyfriend, Brian Peterson Jr., also 19, are charged with first-degree murder in the killing of their newborn infant son in November 1996. Police say the two murdered the baby and dumped his body in a trash bin behind a motel in Newark, Del.
Grossberg was a freshman at the University of Delaware at the time. In July, her parents, Alan and Sonye Grossberg of Wyckoff, N.J., were served with subpoenas ordering them to come before Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady to disclose their daughter's confidences about the case. The action came on the heels of an ABC News program, "20/20," in which Sonye Grossberg told interviewer Barbara Walters that her daughter had revealed to her why she had concealed her pregnancy.
"Why do you think Amy didn't tell you she was pregnant?" Walters asked. "I know the answer to that," Sonye Grossberg replied, "but I'm not at liberty right now to give it."
Their attorneys are now trying to prevent the Grossbergs from having to give that answer - or any other testimony that might be used against their daughter in this capital case - to Delaware's attorney general. They have enlisted the ancient halachic statutes of the Mishnah, the Code of Maimonides and the Shulchan Aruch, in their effort to do so. The Grossbergs' Nov. 21 motion to quash the attorney general's subpoenas stated that they are members of the Conservative branch of Judaism and that the subpoenas would violate their right to the free exercise of religion as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The motion included an affidavit from Rabbi Joel Roth, Finkelstein Professor of Talmud and Jewish Law at the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. "Under Jewish law, a mother and/or a father are not allowed to give testimony against their child in any legal proceeding," wrote Roth.
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