Lifelong Abuse Left Defendant Prone to Impulse, Expert Says : Trial: Lyle Menendez’s development was so retarded that he lacked the ‘basic competencies’ to control his life, a psychology professor testifies.

Lyle Menendez endured a lifetime of severe abuse, which left him immature and prone to impulse when he and his brother shot and killed their parents, a defense expert testified Thursday.

Rejecting prosecutors’ protests that Lyle and Erik Menendez planned and carried out the Aug. 20, 1989, killings, Stuart Newton Hart testified that the abuse so retarded Lyle Menendez’s development that he lacked the “basic competencies” to control his life.

Hart, a psychology professor at Indiana University, said the abuse fed a fear that led to the killings. He said that fear overcame the strong love that Lyle Menendez felt for his parents.

On cross-examination, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich reminded Hart that Lyle Menendez testified that he had held a 12-gauge shotgun to the back of his father’s head and pulled the trigger. “Was that an act of love?” she asked.

It was an act “produced by years of developing fear,” Hart said, adding, “Love, at that point, was pushed out of the way.”

Lyle Menendez, 25, and Erik Menendez, 22, are charged with first-degree murder in the shotgun killings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a millionaire entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47.

The sons shot the parents in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion. If convicted, the brothers could receive the death penalty.

Prosecutors contend that the brothers killed out of hatred and greed. The brothers concede they committed the killings, but say they acted out of fear and in self-defense after years of physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

Testimony on Thursday underscored positions both the prosecution and defense have staked out during the 14-week trial. Bozanich pressed Hart about whether the killings were justified. Defense lawyer Jill Lansing mostly asked him about the alleged abuse Lyle suffered.

Lyle Menendez testified last month that his father sexually abused him from the age of 6 to age 8. Hart testified Thursday that Lyle Menendez was treated in a “highly rejecting manner” by his mother because she did not want to give birth to him. Kitty Menendez thought that being a mother ruined her chances of professional success, he said.

Because of the way Lyle Menendez was treated, he came to view life as a dangerous thing, Hart said. He trusted no one and saw no way out when he and his brother killed their parents, Hart said.

At the start of cross-examination, Bozanich asked: “Do you believe child abuse excuses adult conduct?”

“It explains adult conduct in many ways,” Hart said.

Four days after killing his father, Lyle Menendez spent $15,039 on three Rolex watches and money clips, then wore one of the watches to the funeral in Princeton, N.J. “Was that an act of respect?” Bozanich asked.

“He had this strong love for his father,” Hart said. “And the conditions that had been produced meant he had lost his father. He no longer had this person he loved,” Hart said.

Several weeks later, Lyle Menendez bought a $70,484 Porsche automobile.

“I considered that to be just an extension of a lifelong pattern of not giving any real value to money,” Hart said in answer to a question by Bozanich.

Hart said he was paid $5,000 for his expert testimony. He said he had put in 450 hours preparing for it, which calculated to about $11 per hour. It is customary for expert witnesses to receive compensation for their time.

“I’m an advocate of children in general,” Hart said. “As for Lyle Menendez, I’m an advocate of truth, of being a participant in seeing that justice is done.”