Erik Menendez Jury Resumes Discussions : Trial: Ordered by judge to continue deliberating despite a claim of deadlock, jurors complete a 17th day. They forward new note, but contents are not revealed.

The jury considering murder charges against Erik Menendez, urged by the judge to keep striving for a verdict after reporting a deadlock, made it through a 17th day of deliberations Tuesday without giving up.

Just before adjourning for the evening, however, the panel passed a note to Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg. The contents were not disclosed and the note--which could signal continuing deadlock or simply a question on a point of law--will not be dealt with until this morning.

On Monday, the jury foreman sent a note to the judge reporting that there seemed to be no hope of reaching a verdict because positions had “essentially not changed after three weeks of discussion and debate.”

Weisberg ordered the panel to keep trying and it did through much of Tuesday, despite taking a long break, from 10:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., because one juror was ill with the flu. Jurors spent the afternoon behind closed doors.

Weisberg also held a closed hearing with the lawyers in the Erik Menendez case at 11 a.m., the latest in a series of secret sessions during deliberations, most of which have involved allegations of juror misconduct.

Attorneys said they were ordered not to discuss what happened at the hearing.

But later, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, defense attorney Leslie Abramson did say that Erik Menendez was disappointed at the prospect of an ongoing deadlock in the jury room.

“He was hoping for a verdict that would free him,” Abramson said.

Erik Menendez, 23, and Lyle Menendez, 26, are charged with murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents, Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and Kitty Menendez, 47, in the family’s Beverly Hills home.

Throughout the five-month trial, prosecutors alleged that the brothers killed out of hatred and greed. The brothers admitted the slayings but testified that they killed in fear after years of abuse.

Two juries are hearing the case because some evidence was admitted against only one brother.

The Lyle Menendez jury, in its 19th day of deliberations, heard the conclusion of 400 pages of testimony they asked to have read back, mostly covering the brothers’ accounts of the day they shot their parents. That panel moved back behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon.

One of Lyle Menendez’s lawyers, Michael Burt, said his jury may also be facing a deadlock.

“I think there’s obviously a problem if they’re doing that much rereading and deliberating as long as they have,” he told Associated Press. “ There is some dispute.”

The Lyle Menendez jury is deliberating on a separate floor of the courthouse. It has not been told of the deadlock reported Monday in the Erik Menendez jury, although jurors had to have been aware of the flurry of activity at the courthouse--TV news crews were filming as they left at the end of the day, then again at lunch Tuesday.

Neither jury is sequestered, but jurors have been told repeatedly to avoid reading or watching anything about the case.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti vowed Monday that his office will retry either or both of the Menendez brothers if their cases end in hung juries, emphasizing that it would be “retried as a murder case--because that’s what it is.”

Each jury is considering three counts--one for the killing of each Menendez parent and a third alleging conspiracy to murder. But Weisberg gave jurors four possible verdicts in the slaying of each parent, ranging from first-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter, which carries a penalty of two to four years in prison.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said Tuesday that 13% to 15% of all cases tried by county prosecutors end up in deadlocked juries.

Abramson said that she had anticipated a hung jury from the day the trial began in July.