Second lawyer quits Amir case

"Your negligence, the way you are handling the defence of the accused, is absolutely scandalous. Why are you looking at me with cow eyes?" asked a furious Judge Edmond Levy of Jonathan Ray Goldberg, the lawyer defending Yigal Amir.

Judge Levy later withdrew the "cow eyes" remark, but in the three days since the trial of Amir for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin began he has intermittently exploded in anger at the incompetence and wrangling of the defence. At one moment he shouted in exasperation at Mr Goldberg: "I have spent sleepless nights going over the evidence. I don't understand why you are not well versed in the evidence."

One explanation could be Mr Goldberg's uncertain grasp of Hebrew. An extreme right-winger who emigrated from Houston, Texas, seven years ago, Mr Goldberg wears a black skull cap, lives in a West Bank settlement and has a shaky knowledge of Israeli law. Since the trial got properly under way on Sunday it has become clear that Amir himself, once a law student at Bar-Ilan university outside Tel Aviv, has a better grasp of the law than his lawyer.

The Israeli authorities were keen from the beginning that the trial in Tel Aviv should not turn into a platform for Amir to express his views. There was also fear that with a good lawyer he could somehow divert attention from his earlier admissions of guilt and orchestrate a courtroom drama like the trial of O J Simpson in California.

There is no danger of that. The first days of trial have produced soap opera and not drama. Apart from the unhappy Mr Goldberg, two of Amir's lawyers have dropped the case. The latest casualty is a court- appointed lawyer, Avraham Pachter, who lasted for less than 24 hours. He said yesterday that he decided he could not run the defence after speaking to Amir for an hour late on Monday night.

"There is a conflict of interests between my conscience and the ideological case he wanted to present," Mr Pachter said yesterday. "He wanted to use the trial as a platform for his ideological views." The day before, Mordechai Ofri had also dismayed Judge Levy by resigning, saying he did not have control of the case. He may have been referring to the influence of a Canadian millionaire, Sam Spodak, who is sponsoring the Amir defence.

Mr Ofri said there was difficulty in obtaining the services of expert witnesses, all of whom refused to work with the defence. The only one of the experts who agreed to see Mr Ofri would only do so at his home after midnight so his partner would not find out. Judge Levy even offered to pay Mr Ofri out of state funds to stay on. When he refused the judge said: "You managed to drive even me up the wall. I am accustomed to other standards in the courtroom."

All this is diverting attention from Amir's somewhat contradictory defence. At the start of the trial he said he wanted to cripple, not kill, the Prime Minister, but he has also tried to justify his crime ideologically and has shown pride in his technical efficiency as an assassin.