LOS ANGELES : State High Court Allows Use of Menendez Tape in Trial

The state Supreme Court has cleared the way for prosecutors to present the most direct evidence against Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers’ tape-recorded confession that they killed their parents.

In an order issued late Thursday, the court let stand a lower-court ruling allowing prosecutors to play the 61-minute audiotape at the brothers’ second murder trial, scheduled to begin March 13.

The brothers made the tape with their therapist on Dec. 11, 1989, about four months after they shotgunned their parents to death in the TV room of the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.

On the tape, the brothers tell psychologist L. Jerome Oziel that they killed their mother to put her “out of her misery” and that their father’s infidelity caused her despair. Lyle Menendez also comments that while he missed his parents, he also missed “not having my dog around.”

The tape was played for jurors at the brothers’ first trial, which ended last January with separate juries deadlocked between murder and lesser manslaughter charges. Afterward, defense lawyers claimed that the tape was once again secret under the rules of patient-therapist confidentiality. The defense bid was based on technicalities.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled six weeks ago that any secrecy had evaporated because the brothers made their mental state the central issue in the first trial. Defense attorneys appealed to the state Supreme Court, but it declined Thursday to review the lower-court ruling.