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FILTHY COWARD

Two horrifying photos of the bruised and battered body of tragic tot Nixzmary Brown proved too gruesome yesterday for even her accused killer.

Cesar Rodriguez, 29, the sadistic stepdad accused of beating the 7-year-old girl to death in a fit of rage two years ago, didn’t have the stomach to look at the pictures, turning away in apparent disgust when he glanced at one of them.

He refused to look at the other.

The pictures were shown in Brooklyn Supreme Court at a pre-trial hearing on whether they could be admitted into evidence.

The first photo revealed Nixzmary – emaciated and wearing only red pajama bottoms – when cops found her on the night of the murder.

The girl, who was lying on her back, had bruises all over her body, on the right side of her face and under her chin. She had a gash above her eye.

Rodriguez was sitting beside defense attorney Jeffrey Schwartz when Assistant District Attorney Ama Dwimoh showed him the photo.

The suspect, who has confessed to regularly beating Nixzmary, stared straight ahead for a minute.

Then he glanced down at the picture.

His eyelids fluttered and he looked away – as if disgusted – and continued staring straight ahead.

The second picture showed Nixzmary nude on the operating table.

There was chafing around her mouth – which Rodriguez allegedly had taped – and bruises on her hip area.

Dwimoh angled the picture so Rodriguez could see it – but he refused to look at it, staring straight ahead.

The ADA said she wanted the first picture introduced to refute claims by Rodriguez and the girl’s mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, that she drowned.

The photo showed that Nixzmary was found on the floor and not in the family’s bathtub.

Justice Patricia Hall allowed the photo to be entered into evidence.

But she barred the second photo and four others, ruling they would be too prejudicial to Rodriguez’s defense.

When the hearing ended and Dwimoh put the photos away, Rodriguez gave her a dirty look.

Outside the courtroom, Schwartz said his client had seen the pictures previously. Rodriguez was “very disturbed” by the photos, he said.

After the hearing ended, jury selection began in the case that shocked the city’s conscience.

Nixzmary was slain on Jan. 11, 2006, in her parents’ Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment after she took a container of yogurt and her stepdad went ballistic, prosecutors say.

They claim the girl, who weighed 36 pounds, was regularly beaten, smacked with a belt, duct-taped to a chair and made to sleep in a separate room with only a kitty-litter box as a toilet.

The girl’s mother, also 29, faces a separate murder trial after her husband’s.

douglas.montero@nypost.com