Word: menendez
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Menendez case wraps up and heads for its juries...
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...
...went on to describe a toxic environment where two depraved, vicious parents turned their sons into helpless prisoners and sexual playthings. Lansing recounted testimony of the brothers being punched, belt- whipped and molested by their parents. "You need to decide what was going on in Erik and Lyle Menendez's mind that night," she said, "before you can decide what kind of crime was committed...
...jurors hadn't missed his most important instruction, one that went largely unstated. At no point did the judge inform Lyle's jury of the conditions that would win acquittal -- nor will he when he addresses Erik's jury this week. Weisberg ruled last week that the brothers Menendez could not argue "perfect self-defense," meaning that they had shot their parents out of a reasonable and honest belief that their own lives were in imminent danger. If the two juries are faithful to Weisberg's instructions, the best either brother can hope for is a finding that they...
...courtroom. Pisarcik, who has since broken up with Lyle, challenged the brothers' contention that the murder plan had begun on Aug. 15, when mother Kitty ripped Lyle's toupee from his head. The scene supposedly so shocked Erik that to assuage his brother's humiliation, the younger Menendez confessed to his sibling that he was being continually abused by their father. Lyle allegedly then began thinking of ways of saving his brother from Jose. Pisarcik testified, however, that Erik couldn't have been shocked by his brother's bald pate because the previous spring Erik had told her that Lyle...