Menendez Judge Hints He Prefers Single-Jury Trial : Courts: Defense lawyers request that the brothers be tried separately. Weisberg postpones a final decision and sets another hearing for July 22.

The judge in the Menendez brothers murder case signaled Wednesday that he wants Lyle and Erik Menendez to be tried together and before one jury unless he is given compelling reasons otherwise.

Defense lawyers told Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg on Wednesday that they want separate trials or, at the least, separate juries in the case of the brothers from Beverly Hills accused of murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their parents. The prosecution argued for one trial and a single jury.

Weisberg put off ruling until at least next month, ordering both sides to file more legal briefs on evidence they expect to be significant at the brothers’ retrial.

But he said: “This case can be tried with one jury. That’s my impression.”

At the brothers’ first trial, which ended in January, Lyle and Erik Menendez told separate juries that they had killed their parents in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills home.

They testified that they had lashed out in fear and self-defense after years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Prosecutors contended the brothers killed out of hatred and greed.

After a six-month trial, the separate juries, one for each brother, deadlocked between murder and manslaughter charges. Prosecutors immediately announced that they wanted a retrial and would again seek the death penalty.

Lyle Menendez, 26, and Erik Menendez, 23, remain in County Jail without bail.

Weisberg had been due Wednesday to fix a date for the retrial, to decide whether the brothers will be tried together or apart, to decide between one jury or two if they are tried together and to decide whether the retrial will be held in Van Nuys or at another county courthouse.

None of those issues were decided.

Instead, after ordering more legal briefs, Weisberg set another hearing for July 22. But he said Wednesday that the two-jury system from the first trial produced many problems, and left him with such lingering concerns as the possible sequestering of one or both juries and the issue of keeping one jury’s decision secret from another that is still in deliberations.

“My feeling is this case should be tried by one jury instead of two juries unless there is some compelling reason there should be two juries,” Weisberg said.

Defense lawyers said the compelling reason was that one brother could suffer a spillover prejudicial effect during the penalty phase of the case--if it got that far--by testimony meant to apply only to the other brother.

The penalty phase occurs only if a jury returns a verdict of first-degree murder. Then the jury must choose the penalty: the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Meanwhile, Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s lead attorney, told Weisberg that she would not be ready to begin the retrial until Dec. 1. She said she has to try three other cases and then needs a vacation.

Lyle Menendez’s lawyers, Deputy Public Defenders Bill Weiss and Terri Towery, said they would not be ready until March.

Prosecutors would be ready in December, Deputy Dist. Attys. David Conn and Carol Najera said.

The proceedings Wednesday were marked by sharp exchanges between the prosecution and the defense that revealed the animosity that already has developed between the two sides--although Conn, Najera, Weiss and Towery have all been brought on since the end of the first trial.

Weiss complained Wednesday to Weisberg that three recent letters to the prosecution had brought no response: “It’s like we don’t exist.”

Conn responded that phone calls from the defense to prosecution secretaries had been “extremely discourteous.”

Mindful that the first trial was punctuated by jibes from prosecution and defense, Weisberg urged both sides to be civil with each other.

Then, as the hearing was breaking up, defense lawyers asked prosecutors for photocopies of hundreds of pages of transcripts from the first trial. Prosecutors responded that they didn’t want to copy stacks of paper, especially since the defense already had access to the transcripts.

At that, Abramson said in a loud voice to Conn, “Why don’t you stop being a wise guy and start acting like a lawyer?”

Weisberg gaveled the hearing into session again, and ordered prosecutors to turn over the copies.

Outside, speaking to reporters, Conn dismissed the back-and-forth as “animosities which attorneys generally put aside at some point.”

Abramson, however, took a different tack. She called Conn and Najera “very immature people” and said they had been “extremely uncivil.”

She added: “I don’t think you ever get the upper hand by behaving badly.”