"It is a pathetic woman who lies here," public assistance defense lawyer, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, told a Manhattan judge as Ortega lay at her side, handcuffed to her bed at New York-Presbyterian hospital.
"My client does not wish to have the press in here," the lawyer said, in asking unsuccessfully for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone to bar a reporter from watching as Ortega pleaded not guilty to the bathtub slashing deaths of two young Upper West Side children under her care.
"She's lying in a hospital bed. She has a neck brace, and her hand that you can see is shaking," the lawyer argued today.
"She is in a very debilitated condition. She has tubes running out of her torso. She has a right to privacy."
The lawyer added, "You have a profoundly injured, severely injured individual
you are chilling her right to be free from being observed in this condition."