Ruthann Aron with her lawyers Barry Helfand, left, and Erik Bolog. (By Dayna Smith/The Washington Post)

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, Nov. 6, 1997; Page B01

Ruthann Aron was freed pending trial yesterday, released to the Silver Spring home of a friend one day after psychiatrists at a state facility concluded she knew what she was doing when she allegedly tried to hire a hit man to kill her husband and a second man.

The Montgomery County politician said nothing as she left the courthouse through a wall of camera crews and reporters, flanked by her attorneys and Phyllis Book, who agreed to take Aron in after meeting her at the psychiatric ward of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda last summer.

"She struck me as very fragile and traumatized," Book said in September, when she first extended her hospitality to Aron, who was arrested June 9. "I don't believe there's an evil bone in her body, really."

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Paul A. McGuckian ordered Aron released on conditions of "home detention." She must wear a radio-equipped ankle bracelet that confirms her presence in Book's home and must document visits to the offices of her attorneys or psychiatrists.

McGuckian also barred Aron from contacting the men prosecutors say she plotted to kill: Baltimore lawyer Arthur G. Kahn, who had testified against her in a civil case, and husband Barry Aron, who had told her he would ask for a divorce after she ran for the Montgomery County Council next year.

Barry Aron's attorney said that with those safeguards, the Potomac urologist is comfortable with her release.

"He says, `I don't live in fear. I work in the same office. I work in the same operating room. I live in the same home. Anybody wants me, they know where I am,' " said attorney Stephen A. Friedman.

"He's very hopeful she can get a grip on her problems and work them through."

Ruthann Aron, who previously put up $25,000 bond, is set to stand trial Dec. 15 on charges of solicitation to commit murder. A second trial is scheduled for Jan. 5 on charges that she tried to kill Barry Aron by poisoning a batch of homemade chili. She has pleaded not guilty to the poisoning charges but mounted an insanity defense to the murder solicitation counts.

After a month seeing defense psychiatrists at Suburban, she has spent the last two months at a state mental facility in Jessup. Doctors there concluded that she was competent to stand trial and that she knew what she was doing when she told an undercover police officer that she wanted her husband and Kahn killed.

Lawyers yesterday revealed Aron's diagnosis as "borderline personality disorder."

A psychiatric reference manual defines the condition as "a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image . . . and marked impulsivity." Among the nine symptoms listed are several that associates say apparently fit Aron snugly, including "stress-related paranoid ideation," or the formation of ideas, and "a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships."

But forensic psychiatrists warn that a personality disorder typically does not rise to the threshold Aron must reach to be judged "not criminally responsible" under Maryland law: a preponderance of evidence showing that at the time of the offense, she suffered from a mental disease or defect of such magnitude that she either was unable to appreciate the "criminality" of her conduct or was unable to conform her conduct to the law.

George Lipman, who heads the mental health division at the Maryland public defender's office, said, "I think it has happened" that a personality disorder resulted in a finding of "not criminally responsible." But, he said, the "vast majority" of successful insanity defenses involve more serious mental afflictions such as psychosis.

"Borderline is a huge category," Lipman added. "The history of the word is the borderline between neurosis and psychosis. So it can be heavy, or it can be something out of a Woody Allen movie."

Aron attorney Erik D. Bolog acknowledged the legal challenge but said Aron's defense will be fortified by specifics to be revealed at her trial.

"We have had her examined by forensic psychiatrists who believe she is not criminally responsible," Bolog said.