By MICHAEL FINNEGAN
Daily News Albany Bureau

Litman, best known for his defense of Central Park preppie killer Robert Chambers, will help defend Peterson against first-degree murder charges in the death of the newborn son he and high school sweetheart Amy Grossberg secretly delivered in a Delaware motel.

Litman is the latest well-known legal figure to join the defense. Pathologist Dr. Michael Baden has been hired as a consultant by Grossberg's family.

Baden, a former New York medical examiner who testified as a defense expert at O.J. Simpson's criminal trial, said he performed an independent autopsy last week on the newborn that Peterson and Grossberg allegedly killed and dumped in a garbage bin behind a Comfort Inn outside Newark, Del.

Baden refused to comment on the autopsy results, citing a court-issued gag order.

  Peterson and Grossberg, 18-year-olds from upscale New Jersey suburbs, face a preliminary court hearing tomorrow in Wilmington, Del. But that hearing could be postponed if prosecutors obtain a grand jury indictment against them today.

Joseph Hurley, another Peterson defense lawyer, yesterday denied reports that he had been dismissed over his handling of the teen's surrender last week. Hurley had been criticized because Peterson, who hid from authorities for six days, was mobbed by the media when his parents brought him to the FBI on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Peterson was transferred yesterday from the infirmary inside Delaware's Gander Hill Correctional Facility to a cell isolated from other inmates.

Grossberg was being held at the Delores Baylor Correctional Facility in nearby New Castle. Grossberg's family has formally claimed the body of the newborn, but so far nobody has picked it up.