5 Women, 7 Men Selected for Menendez Retrial Jury

Despite protests from the defense that prosecutors were culling women from the panel, five women and seven men were seated Thursday as jurors in the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez.

Defense attorneys had feared that a mountain of publicity during and after the Beverly Hills brothers’ first trial would make picking a jury impossible. But they expressed satisfaction with the panelists selected.

Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg told the jurors that the case will begin after several unresolved legal issues are decided next week.

The jurors range in age from 25 to 64 and were drawn from a 20-mile radius of the Van Nuys Courthouse. Six alternates--four men and two women--were chosen.

Jury selection began Aug. 23 and continued through most of September as jurors answered lengthy questionnaires about what they had read, seen or heard about the first trial, as well as their opinions about child abuse, psychology, and their experiences with therapists, family violence and their parents, siblings and children.

The brothers, now 27 and 24, are accused in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun deaths of their parents--powerful entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Mary Louise, who was known as Kitty.

The prosecution in the first trial alleged that the brothers killed out of greed and hatred, but the defense countered that they killed in self-defense, fearing for their lives after threatening to expose their father’s sexual abuse.