Prosecutor Urges Death for Brothers

A prosecutor urged jurors Thursday to impose the death penalty on the Menendez brothers for the murders of their millionaire parents, saying a Beverly Hills address shouldn’t spare them from the same punishment meted out to poorer defendants.

“Whether you come from Compton, East Los Angeles or Beverly Hills,” the punishment must match the horror of the crime, Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn said during his closing argument in the penalty phase of the murder retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez.

“If not this case, what case?” Conn asked. “You’re not giving them anything they didn’t earn. They deserve the death penalty.”

A few moments later, a defense attorney pleading for the life of Erik Menendez brought up Brentwood’s most famous murder defendant, trying to turn the tables on the prosecutor.

“I was terrified listening to him,” attorney Barry Levin said, “and then I thought, isn’t he from the same prosecutor’s office that thought the person who murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman shouldn’t even be eligible for the death penalty?”

Pounding on the podium and pointing at Conn, Levin continued: “We’re talking about him looking at you with a straight face and telling you that of all the people who commit a crime, Erik Menendez must die. What about O.J. [Simpson]? He wasn’t even eligible for consideration.”

Levin addressed jurors for about 90 minutes and will complete his argument today. Lyle Menendez’s lawyers are also scheduled to give closing arguments today.

Levin urged jurors to spare Erik Menendez because he confessed to the killings and turned himself in.

“You would have never known, no one would have ever known whatever it was that happened in that den if Erik Menendez hadn’t confessed,” he said. A death verdict serves no one, he added.

“The family has closure. The prosecution has its conviction. Enough is enough,” he said. “You shouldn’t kill Erik Menendez because you don’t have to. You’ll be protecting no one. You’ll be appeasing no one. . . . If you feel any compassion, this is the time to use it. If you feel any mercy, this is the time to use it.”

Levin said he didn’t “know what [Erik’s] life was like and what led up to the events of Aug. 20, 1989. I don’t know any more than you know. The district attorney doesn’t know. But I do know that something was terribly wrong inside this family.”

And so a trial that has at times served as a flash point for the “abuse excuse” defense, crime-scene analysis technologies, issues of personal responsibility and, finally, courtroom ethics continued to be a social catchall as it entered its final chapter.

As Levin began his closing argument, co-counsel Leslie Abramson, the attorney who has been closely identified with the case for more than six years, sat silently at the defense table. She had delivered a stirring closing argument at Erik Menendez’s first murder trial, which resulted two years ago in jury deadlock.

As the penalty phase of the retrial ends, the responsibility for delivering the closing argument suddenly fell on Levin when defense psychiatrist William Vicary testified last week that he altered his notes at Abramson’s direction, raising ethical questions and possibly compromising her credibility with the jury.

Conn capitalized on the defense woes, telling jurors:

“What you saw exposed right in front of your eyes was the corruption of the criminal justice system. It was nothing less than amazing to see [Vicary] actually admit on the witness stand that, yes, I destroyed my notes.”

The prosecutor argued that Vicary “was playing judge and jury and he has no right to do that. He has no right to trick and deceive a jury and corrupt the criminal justice system.”

He ripped into a defense he called “fraudulent,” telling jurors, “You should not accept this country club ‘abuse excuse’ defense.”

He showed jurors a large chart showing the scales of justice. On one scale, the heaviest, were portraits of Jose and Kitty Menendez, tacked over photographs of their bloodied corpses and the gory crime scene. On the other scale, the words “Too much tennis. Not enough hugs.”

“Do you think the country club defense presented to you in this case outweighs the horrors of Aug. 20, 1989?” Conn asked.

Erik and Lyle Menendez, now ages 25 and 28, were convicted last month of first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez, 45, and former beauty queen Kitty Menendez, 47.

The brothers had based their defense largely on their allegations that their parents had abused them sexually and otherwise. After jurors apparently rejected that defense by returning first-degree murder verdicts, the defense shifted the focus to psychological abuse and pressure to succeed.

Conn argued that the brothers actually “had it pretty good.” He mocked the defense’s attempts to portray them as lonely, brutalized children.

Regarding Lyle: “They want us to believe he was lonely? What about all those people out there who are home alone on Friday nights, or hanging out with the jerks at the gym? Here’s a guy who’s driving around in an Alfa Romeo with a pretty girlfriend and we’re supposed to believe he’s lonely?”

As for Erik: “He was the class clown. He had his own little clique. It must be fantastic to travel around the country winning tennis tournaments.”

Quoting a relative, Conn said Jose and Kitty Menendez were “great people” who didn’t do a great job of raising their sons. But that didn’t mean they didn’t love them, Conn added.

“Kitty Menendez virtually gave up her life, literally and figuratively, for the defendants in this case. She sacrificed her life for them. And the defense built of trivia is trying to suggest that Kitty had it coming and she deserved to be shot in the face.”

Instead, he said, the sons were out of control because the parents never set limits on them. Finally, Erik and Lyle Menendez made “a cold, calculating decision” to kill their parents.

“They chose death on Friday when they went shopping for shotguns,” Conn said. “They chose death on Saturday when they reloaded their shotguns with more lethal ammunition. They chose death Sunday when they shot their parents to death. And now they want you to choose life for them?”