LOS ANGELES : Lyle Menendez’s Lawyers Expected to Leave Case
Both of Lyle Menendez’s attorneys are expected to announce at a Superior Court hearing Monday that they will not defend the elder Menendez brother on murder charges in his second trial.
At the hearing, at which Judge Stanley M. Weisberg will set a new trial date, chief defense lawyer Jill Lansing, 47, is expected to say she wants to spend more time with a young daughter.
Michael Burt, 41, who works for the San Francisco public defender’s office and was appointed to the Menendez case to back up Lansing, is booked the next few months at death penalty cases in the Bay Area. He could not be reached Friday for comment.
Lyle Menendez, 26, and Erik Menendez, 23, are charged with murder in the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents. After six months of trial, separate juries were unable last month to reach verdicts.
Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s lead defense attorney, recently filed legal papers asking to be appointed--at county expense--as Erik Menendez’s lawyer, saying he is indigent.
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