Menendez Jury Loses 2 Panelists

Deliberations in the murder retrial of the Menendez brothers began anew Thursday after the forewoman and a pregnant juror were dismissed because of medical problems.

It could not be determined whether stress or tensions in the jury room played any role in their illnesses. Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg said during a brief hearing that the women were stricken overnight with serious medical conditions.

The judge ordered the dismissed jurors not to discuss the case with anyone, including their former fellow jurors, until the case is decided.

The two women were replaced shortly before noon by two alternate jurors--one male, one female--changing the gender makeup of the panel to eight men and four women. Two alternates remain, both men.

Gender had been a controversial issue during jury selection, when defense attorneys accused prosecutors of systematically trying to exclude women.

The jurors chose a new foreperson and deliberated less than two hours Thursday afternoon, a court spokeswoman said. Court officials, saying they were acting on Weisberg’s order, would not disclose which juror has been selected to lead the deliberations.

Lyle and Erik Menendez, ages 28 and 25, are charged with murder and special circumstances that could expose them to the death penalty in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez, 45, and his wife, Kitty, 47, a former small-town beauty queen.

Prosecutors seemed unfazed by Thursday’s developments, which meant that the jury had to abandon seven days of deliberations and start over from scratch.

But defense attorney Leslie H. Abramson was openly displeased. “Did you ever hear the expression ‘Menendez karma’? “ asked a dejected Abramson as she left the Van Nuys courthouse. She said the change in the jury’s makeup was “another lucky break” for prosecutors.

In juror questionnaires answered before they were selected, the dismissed jurors had recalled seeing television coverage of one or both brothers crying on the witness stand during the first trial.

Both dismissed jurors answered their questionnaires in a manner that the defense considered favorable to its position that the brothers had been victims of incest and child abuse.

One said she believed Erik Menendez had “a lousy life that turned into a horror story.” The other said the brothers seemed genuinely traumatized.

“Each of our jurors had been chosen in very careful balance with the others,” Abramson said. “This is a completely different jury.”

Excused after seven days of deliberations were the forewoman, a 55-year-old Immigration and Naturalization Service supervisor from Chatsworth, and a 31-year-old Department of Water and Power billing clerk from La Crescenta. They were replaced by a 59-year-old homemaker who raised four children, and a 34-year-old mailman who has a 3-year-old daughter. Both new jurors are from Sylmar.

Abramson suggested that the stress of possibly divisive deliberations might have contributed to the jurors’ medical problems, but Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn disagreed. “I don’t think we can speculate about what’s going on in the jury room,” he said. “We don’t attribute it to stress or anything else.”

Sources said the ailing jurors did not come to the courthouse Thursday.

During jury selection, the defense accused Conn of culling women from the panel. After the prosecutor presented a detailed analysis of his juror challenges, Weisberg found no evidence that women were being excluded from the jury.

At the brothers’ first trial, which ended in January 1994, the Erik Menendez jury split 6-6, with male jurors favoring murder verdicts and female jurors holding out for lesser manslaughter convictions. Lyle’s jury also split, but the division did not follow gender lines.

A single jury is hearing the retrial of both brothers, and this panel has fewer avenues for compromise.

The prosecution is seeking first-degree murder convictions with special circumstances that could result in the death penalty. The defense is seeking acquittals in the mother’s slaying and a manslaughter conviction in the father’s.

Erik Menendez testified at the retrial that he and his brother fired their shotguns because they feared that their parents were about to kill them to hush up a family incest scandal.