Menendez Defense Hits at Claims of Greed Motive : Trial: Attorney says brothers had easy access to wealth before slayings. She urges jurors not to be biased against the rich.

A defense attorney implored jurors Thursday to reject the idea that the Menendez brothers were motivated by financial gain when they gunned down their parents.

Discriminating against the wealthy is as unfair as discriminating against the poor, said attorney Jill Lansing, who represents Lyle Menendez.

“To decide this case, because someone was born into a rich family, by a different standard of justice is to violate not only your oath but the tradition of this country,” she said.

Lansing described the Menendez household as a living hell for Lyle Menendez, 25, and his brother Erik, 23, and asked jurors to consider: “Would money make you want to have the life Lyle Menendez had?”

She ridiculed prosecution claims of financial motivation, saying the brothers already lived lavishly, with easy access to their money.

Conceding that the brothers shotgunned their parents to death, she asked jurors to return verdicts no harsher than manslaughter.

“We are not asking you to say they acted reasonably,” Lansing said in her closing argument. “That is not the test here. A manslaughter is an unreasonable killing.”

Lansing spoke on the second day of final arguments in the trial, which began in July. On Wednesday, a prosecutor painted the brothers as coldblooded killers who wanted to escape their parents’ control.

The brothers are charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty. Jurors will be allowed to return lesser verdicts, including second-degree murder and voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. The latter could result in as little as two years in prison.

There is a separate panel of jurors for each brother. Lawyers first addressed Lyle Menendez’s jury, which is scheduled to begin deliberations Friday. Erik Menendez’s jury is to hear from lawyers next week.

The brothers say that they killed their parents, Jose, 45, and Kitty, 47, in self-defense after enduring years of sexual and psychological abuse. Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich called them coldblooded murderers who killed with greed and hatred in their hearts.

Tacking up a photo of a bloody Jose Menendez on a couch and a gory Kitty Menendez on the floor of the family room in their Beverly Hills mansion, Bozanich told jurors on Wednesday: “This is not a hard case. This is not a complicated case. These two people were watching TV and they got slaughtered by their sons.”

The prosecutor belittled Lyle Menendez, saying he callously spent thousands of dollars after the killings--$15,039 on Rolex watches and money clips, $70,484 on a Porsche and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a chicken-wing restaurant.

“Shopping to be able to get over (killing) your parents seems to be taking shopping a bit far,” Bozanich said.

But Lansing argued Thursday that the only real question in the case is: “What in the world could have caused these two boys to kill their parents?”

She reminded jurors of the litany of horror stories told by relatives and friends who took the stand. She recalled testimony about physical punishments, terrorizing threats, sexual molestation and demands for achievement that could never be met.

She recalled witnesses telling of “ ‘Jeopardy’ dinners” at which Jose quizzed his sons relentlessly and, she said, “If you didn’t know the answers you were belittled and humiliated. . . . And the price of failure was the highest price a child can pay, the loss of affection, the loss of love and loss of approval.”