Word: bozanich
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Prosecutor Pamela Bozanich began her closing argument last Wednesday by tacking a single picture to the courtroom bulletin board. The full-color glossy showed the TV room of the Menendez mansion in Beverly Hills, California, patriarch Jose lifeless on a couch, his wife Kitty in a smashed and bloodied heap on the floor. In blunt language that veered from the schoolmarmish to the sarcastic, Bozanich delivered her message: "Lyle Menendez, accompanied by his brother, planned this murder . . . this was an intentional killing...
...sexual abuse is here to portray the victims as monsters so you don't care that they are dead," argued prosecutor Bozanich. "But we don't execute people for being bad parents." Bozanich had to deal with the defense's strategy, which in effect put the dead parents on trial for alleged abuses. Indeed, she could no longer argue that the brothers acted out of pure greed. "This was not a classic murder for financial gain," she allowed. "The defendant and his brother wanted to maintain their life the way it was, without their parents controlling them...
...Even so, Bozanich cast the details of abuse as cool, calculated lies. She launched this portion of her argument with a reading from Hitler's Mein Kampf: "The great masses of the people . . . will more easily fall victims to a great lie than a small one." Bozanich then recapped the lies Lyle had told in the seven months prior to his arrest -- lies he had to own up to once his trial got under way. He lied to police investigators when he made up the tale of Mafia hit men, even as he had the presence of mind to remove...
...misery" over her loveless marriage, making a joint decision that Jose "should be killed" because of "what he's doing to my mother." Hoping to discredit Oziel, defense lawyers offered extensive testimony from / the married therapist's former lover. "The defense proved that Dr. Oziel was a philanderer," Bozanich said. "They did not prove that Dr. Oziel could not work a tape recorder...
...Bozanich dismissed the defense team's psychiatrists, child-abuse therapists and forensics experts as "spin doctors." But the prosecution's decision not to hire its own experts leaves all the defense's witnesses virtually undisputed. Most persuasive was Dr. William Vicary, a psychiatrist who specializes in sex offenders and has evaluated 750 accused murderers. After spending 88 hours with Erik, Vicary concluded that Erik had been the victim of sexual abuse. Asked why Erik had not spoken of the abuse until almost a year after the shootings, Vicary answered, "It's very common for people who have been molested...