A Circus of Disorder in the Court : Trial: The Menendez case has been marked by insults, finger-pointing and infighting among the attorneys and others. At times, the atmosphere has resembled a barroom brawl.

The name-calling began moments after the opposing lawyers gathered at the bench before the judge presiding over the Menendez brothers’ murder trial.

“We know . . . he is homosexual,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lester Kuriyama, speaking of Erik Menendez, the younger of the brothers charged in the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents.

“This is disgusting,” defense attorney Leslie Abramson said.

“It’s not disgusting,” Kuriyama retorted.

“You’re disgusting,” Abramson said.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg stepped in, warning, “Let’s not get into personal. . . .”

At which point, he was interrupted, as the lawyers resumed arguing over Erik Menendez’s sexual orientation.

This exchange took place during the last days of testimony--but it had been that way for five months. The trial, now nearing its end with jurors deliberating, became steeped in acrimony that spilled from the courtroom much like an Old West barroom brawl tumbling into the street.

Opposing counsel exchanged barbs. Witnesses sued each other. Even the legions of media got into the act.

Vanity Fair scribe Dominick Dunne, a courtroom regular, has been sued twice already; in the midst of testimony, he was called outside and served right in the courthouse corridor with a libel suit brought by another writer.

Sure, other high-profile trials have been marked by animosity, especially recently in Los Angeles, where racial tensions often have been played out in the courts.

But the Menendez case appeared to be a simple murder trial. Although the defense sought to spotlight child abuse, to many trial junkies it has been nothing more than a multilayered soap opera with no broader implications than a glimpse into the miseries of the wealthy--hardly a scenario to ratchet up the pressure and compel the players to snipe at each other.

That’s just the way the trial went, though--a whiny, finger-pointing, name-calling circus.

“In other trials I’ve covered, when the lawyers are outside the courtroom, you’ll see them relaxed and talking to each other, being social,” said Robert Rand, who is writing a book about the case.

“You do not see that in this trial. . . . There’s personal animosity.”

The only ones who seemingly have stayed out of the fray, ironically, are Lyle and Erik Menendez. Although the brothers, ages 25 and 23, had plenty bad to say about their dead parents from the witness stand, they have been polite figures in court--unlike many defendants, who fidget, frown or even cry out at unpleasant testimony.

Most of the infighting has involved the rival attorneys, often centering on Abramson, who built a reputation as one of the state’s leading defense lawyers with an in-your-face style.

In her closing statement this week, she told jurors, “I don’t know if you felt it or not. This case has been tense. . . . It’s been cold in here.”

And so it was a few weeks back that she stood at the lectern and complained that the two prosecutors in the case were “mugging” for the jurors. The prosecutors--Kuriyama and Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Bozanich--had smiled at each other after making a series of successful objections to Abramson’s questions to a witness.

The judge told all the lawyers to behave.

In that exchange, the sparks flew in open court. But about 25,000 pages of trial transcripts make clear that the emotions more often have erupted at the many “sidebars,” arguments outside the hearing of jurors or other court spectators.

At one, where jurors might have assumed a fine point of law was being debated, Bozanich was complaining to the judge that Abramson was smirking at her.

Another time, Abramson complained that Bozanich was treating her like a schoolgirl.

Another exchange pitted the prosecutors against one of the three other defense lawyers, Michael Burt.

He was asking questions of Judalon Smyth, the woman who alerted police that the brothers had confided their roles in the killings to Beverly Hills psychologist L. Jerome Oziel, her former paramour.

Defense attorneys called Smyth to tell about her failed affair with Oziel, part of their effort to discredit him. Prosecutors, in turn, painted Smyth as a jilted lover hell-bent on revenge.

So Smyth got in her own shot, volunteering from the stand, “I know that Ms. Bozanich would lie.”

After storming to a sidebar, Bozanich said, “I’m really pissed at this.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Burt said.

“You should have approached the bench before you elicited that,” she told Burt.

“Yeah, you should have,” Kuriyama chimed in.

Burt had enough. He responded: “I’m not here to be lectured by you or your co-counsel.”

Even the judge has been drawn into the name-calling.

It happened once during another discussion of Erik Menendez’s sexual orientation--an issue brought up periodically before jurors in carefully worded, ambiguous exchanges.

Under questioning by Abramson, his own attorney, the younger Menendez brother testified that his mother “made it seem like it was worse than death to be gay, and I didn’t think I was, I just--I didn’t know. . . .”

He suggested, however, that his uncertainty was due to “what was happening with my father”--the alleged molestation. And Abramson quickly asked, “Did you like girls?”

“Yes,” he said.

Prosecutors wanted to pursue the issue in more detail, under the theory, finally argued to jurors in recent days, that Jose Menendez--far from forcing sex on his younger son--may have been furious because he suspected Erik Menendez was gay.

But Weisberg consistently limited the prosecution’s explorations of the sensitive issue during testimony, apparently seeking to avoid another sideshow in the trial.

Those limits were tested Nov. 18 when Bozanich asked a defense child abuse expert to explain what Erik Menendez meant when he once spoke of “all my relationships with different people.”

Abramson objected and the lawyers gathered before the judge.

“The mind’s in the gutter here,” Abramson said. “So unbelievable. I think Mr. Kuriyama ran out of toes and he’s using Ms. Bozanich’s now . . . trying to go after homosexuality once more.”

“I don’t infer that from the questioning,” Weisberg responded.

“Well, ask her. Don’t be Dr. Oziel. Ask,” Abramson said, evoking the witness she had portrayed as a devious incompetent.

“I beg your pardon?” Weisberg said.

“Don’t be Dr. Oziel,” Abramson responded. “Ask.”

“Well, don’t be Judalon Smyth and we’ll be fine,” Weisberg fired back.

Oziel and Smyth also have been caught in the fallout of litigation.

At the close of the first week of the trial, state authorities moved to revoke Oziel’s license, alleging that he illegally allowed the secret tape-recording of the two 1989 therapy sessions in which the Menendez brothers first spoke of killing their parents. He testified that he allowed no secret taping.

Later, Smyth sued Oziel, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in a Downtown law firm, where the ex-lovers were attending a deposition on another suit--one he brought against her, along with Vanity Fair and Dunne, for a 1990 article.

Then Oziel--who emphatically denies any wrongdoing--sued the Southern California Psychiatric Society and the “editorial committee” of the professional group’s newsletter. He said he was defamed by a November, 1992, edition of Southern California Psychiatrist, which reported that he “arranged for his paramour to audiotape a (therapy) session.”

Oziel is asking for at least $1 million in general damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

Dan Willick, attorney for the psychiatric society, denied liability and said, “I do not believe my clients could have possibly harmed Dr. Oziel’s reputation.”

Then there’s been the press.

The suit served on Dunne in the courthouse was filed by Stuart Goldman, a Los Angeles-based free-lance writer, who also complained of libel.

Their dispute began with an article Goldman wrote in the November edition of Los Angeles magazine under the pen name “Wil Runyon.” The article, titled “Bad Press,” about coverage of the Menendez case, said Dunne, a novelist and Vanity Fair mainstay, “seems to be the favored butt of ill will by other writers on the scene.”

Dunne faxed a two-page letter to Lew Harris, the magazine’s editor, taking issue with the piece and alleging Goldman was “trying to make a name for himself.”

Even though the letter has not yet been published in the magazine, it prompted Goldman’s suit--seeking more than $15 million in damages. The legal papers asserted that the letter to the editor caused Goldman “emotional shock and loss of self-esteem.”

The aftermath to the suit, however, was totally out of keeping with the rest of the Menendez case. Goldman’s claims were not enough to goad a response: Dunne declined to comment.