Convict Zymere’s ‘monster’: DA

A handful of people bear responsibility for the death of battered and abused Zymere Perkins, but Monday, Manhattan prosecutors asked a jury to convict just one of them — the man standing trial in the fatal beating of the fragile 6-year-old Harlem boy.

“Zymere’s monsters weren’t under the bed. He had two horrible human beings down the hall from him … Geraldine Perkins and Rysheim Smith,” said Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell, identifying the boy’s mother and exboyfriend during closing arguments at Smith’s murder trial in Manhattan Supreme

Court.

“They are equally responsible for this grave murder. They both committed unspeakable violence on a vulnerable, compromised child.”

O’Connell blamed the Administration for Children’s Services for failing Zymere (inset near right) at nearly every turn, along with Perkins, who the prosecutor says oversaw the abuse by Smith and often participated in it.

But O’Connell said the blame ultimately falls on Smith (inset far right), whom she accused of beating the boy to death inside his squalid Harlem apartment with a broken broomstick on Sept. 26, 2016.

O’Connell pointed to the testimony of Zymere’s teachers, who testified how the boy would recoil in fear at the mention of Smith’s name.

“He admitted to disciplining and beating Zymere, and yet as he sits here today, he wants you to believe he never laid his hands on him. Both things cannot be true,” she said.

“You must convict Rysheim of the indifferent murder of this child.”

The accused killer’s lawyers painted a different picDefense ture. lawyer Arnold Levine said Smith had been scapegoated and bore no responsibility for little Zymere in life or death.

“I know it might sound cold and immoral. But he has no legal obligation to him. That’s just what the law is, whether you like it or not,” Levine said, urging, “Don’t get caught up in emotions.”

Levine called Perkins an “unreliable person” and “a liar” who fabricated her testimony to lay the blame squarely on her ex-boyfriend.

“She killed her little boy,” he charged.

“She’s trying to implicate Rysheim, to incriminate Rysheim. She’s trying to put Rysheim in that apartment. She knows what happened in that apartment, she knows what happened to Zymere. And it happened when she was alone with Zymere.”

Smith has been on trial facing second-degree murder and related charges in Zymere’s death. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Justice Ruth Pickholz is expected to charge the jury Tuesday before they begin their deliberations.