Jury to Begin Death Penalty Deliberation

After the end of a day of emotionally stirring courtroom oratory from lawyers who at times shouted and pointed, and at other times spoke in near whispers, eight men and four women now will decide whether convicted parent-killers Lyle and Erik Menendez should live or die.

The jurors selected a new foreperson and left the courthouse about 4:15 p.m. Friday, a court spokeswoman said. Deliberations will begin Monday.

Much of the day Friday was devoted to impassioned arguments from defense attorneys, who implored jurors to spare Lyle, 28, and Erik, 25, saying life in prison without parole was punishment enough for two sons who were pressured by their millionaire parents to succeed at all costs.

“Please, please spare him. It will be a decision you’ll never, ever regret,” said Erik Menendez’s defense attorney, Barry Levin.

The brothers, who blasted away at their parents with 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns on Aug. 20, 1989, were convicted last month of first-degree murder with special circumstances.

One of Lyle’s lawyers, Deputy Public Defender Terri Towery, addressed the jury in a soft, gentle voice that was barely audible.

“There is much evidence before you that Jose and Kitty Menendez were participants in what happened,” she said. “I’m not saying that Jose and Kitty Menendez deserved to die. Of course they didn’t. But you must consider whether the parents’ treatment of their son, Lyle Menendez, played a role in what happened.

“If that relationship had been different, would this tragedy have happened?” she asked.

Towery finished her argument, telling jurors: “Compassion is not approval, mercy is not acceptance, and understanding is not justification. I ask each of you to look in your own heart for some compassion and some mercy and understanding for Lyle Menendez.”

At that moment, Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn leaped to his feet, and in a thundering voice, repeated Lyle Menendez’s infamous words from a taped conversation with therapist Jerome Oziel a few months after the murders:

“I miss my parents, but then again I miss my dog too,” Conn quoted Lyle as saying.

“Remember that? Those are the words of Lyle Menendez,” Conn told the jurors.

He then demonstrated how Lyle straddled his wounded mother, leaned over, placed the shotgun against her cheek and fired.

“This is not a little child here. It was a coldblooded killer who did that,” Conn said. He pointed at Lyle, walked toward him and said: “Look into his eyes. You see black eyes, dead eyes. And they should be dead for the horror he committed.”

Conn told jurors that “Jose and Kitty Menendez did not bring out their own deaths.” And, he said, the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment for “one of the most reprehensible and unspeakable crimes to come along in a long time.”

Erik Menendez’s famed defense attorney Leslie Abramson was silenced by a brewing legal scandal over testimony that she pressured a psychiatrist to delete potentially damaging evidence from his notes, so the day’s most dramatic moment went to one of Lyle’s lawyers. Abramson had been expected to briefly address the jury, but did not.

Deputy Public Defender Charles Gessler, considered by his colleagues to be the dean of death penalty defense lawyers, placed his hands on Lyle Menendez’s shoulders and told jurors that if they spared his life, Lyle would spend the rest of his days in prison.

“Nobody will ever again say to Lyle Menendez, ‘You have to be No. 1,’ ” Gessler said, his voice choked with emotion.