2 Veteran Prosecutors to Replace 1st Menendez Team for Retrial

The prosecution team that could not persuade two juries to unanimously convict Lyle and Erik Menendez of the murders of their parents has been replaced, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti announced Wednesday.

Deputy Dist. Attys. David Conn and Carol Najera will take over the high-profile case from colleagues Pam Bozanich and Lester Kuriyama, he said in a statement.

Conn, now acting head deputy of Garcetti’s special trials division, will be the lead prosecutor in the second trial. He and Najera, Conn said at a news conference, will be ready to retry the case within two months. They will again seek a first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty, he said.

Jill Lansing, Lyle Menendez’s lawyer, said: “Getting ready for this case in 60 days would be a lot of work.” Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s lawyer, could not be reached for comment.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg is expected to decide on a trial date at a hearing Monday.

In the statement, Garcetti praised Bozanich and Kuriyama. He did not elaborate on why he decided to replace the two.

The prosecution was widely regarded as the loser because both juries were deeply split on whether the 1989 shotgun slayings of Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills mansion constituted murder committed out of greed, or self-defense by adult sons who killed in fear after years of physical, mental and sexual abuse.

Bozanich told reporters recently that she would rather “eat ground glass for a year” than go through another Menendez trial. She reiterated that sentiment Wednesday.

“I’ve gone on record as indicating I do not want to retry this case,” she said. “I’m very happy that my friend David Conn will be doing it.”

Conn and Bozanich worked together on the 1988 Bill Bradford murder case. Bradford was convicted and given the death penalty for luring young women into the desert, then raping and killing them.

Kuriyama, the less-experienced member of the first trial’s prosecution team, had not tried a death penalty case before, said a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. Kuriyama declined Wednesday to comment on his removal from the Menendez case.

Najera said she thought she and Conn were selected because of their “significant trial experience.” They said they have tried two death penalty cases each.

Conn, a 15-year veteran, is best known for his successful prosecution of the four men charged in the so-called “Cotton Club” murder of theatrical impresario Roy Radin.

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Najera, with nine years experience, last summer successfully prosecuted one of the lesser defendants in the Reginald O. Denny beating case that stemmed from the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Her death penalty cases were the successful prosecution in 1992 of a man who killed an armored-truck driver during a series of highly publicized robberies in the Long Beach area and the earlier unsuccessful prosecution of a man accused of drug-related murders in Laurel Canyon.

Conn said he and Najera have to resolve whether to try the case before one jury or two; whether to present new evidence, and how best to dismantle the defense’s negative portrayal of the slain parents.

A motion filed last week to have the second trial moved from the San Fernando Valley to the Downtown Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building is to be decided by Weisberg at the Monday hearing.