Menendez Jurors Had Sympathy, but No Doubts

There was no doubt in their minds that the two brothers should spend the rest of their lives in prison for killing their parents.

But still jurors wept as they convicted Lyle and Erik Menendez of the double murder and on Wednesday as they agreed on the verdicts.

“There were times I had to hold back tears,” said juror Bruce Seitz, a 34-year-old mail carrier. “After the reading of the verdicts, a lot of us cried. At this verdict, and at the first one.”

Jurors tried to be sympathetic over the upbringing that may have prompted the murders, but in the end they couldn’t excuse it, they said.

Juror Lesley Hillings, 36, a postal inspection worker, said the panel considered the brothers’ ages and their lack of previous felony convictions as it pondered whether to recommend putting the pair to death.

“We felt the parents were very controlling, demanding, that they didn’t have a normal-type childhood,” Hillings said. “We did have sympathy for them in that respect.”

Meeting with reporters in the courtroom two hours after sentencing the brothers to life in prison without parole and in separate interviews later, jurors expressed relief that the trial was over.

They said there were no straw votes or split decisions in the jury room.

From the start of deliberations, jurors were of one mind about both the guilty verdicts and the punishment, seven of them indicated.

But they acknowledged having differing viewpoints on the controversial abuse defense offered by the brothers’ attorneys.

“We did think there was psychological abuse to some extent. I think most of us believed that,” Hillings said. “Sexual abuse? I don’t think we’ll ever know if that’s true or not.

“All of the elements of first-degree murder were there, regardless” of whether a lifetime of abuse had motivated the shootings, Hillings said.

The question of abuse “did not necessarily have to be answered to reach a verdict,” Leigh Valvo agreed. Valvo was replaced by an alternate juror during the penalty phase after she suffered a heart attack, but returned to court for Wednesday’s finale.

Jurors were surprised Lyle Menendez did not take the stand to testify on his own behalf. But they said some of Erik’s testimony didn’t hold up.

“Erik was very articulate and came across to me as a very nice person,” Seitz said. But some things he told jurors under oath “we found were contradictory. . . . Basically, we had to reject a lot of his testimony.”

Jurors said they did not believe that the brothers feared for their lives when they shot their parents.

They also shrugged off problems encountered in the final days of the trial by defense lawyer Leslie Abramson after a psychiatrist accused her of ordering him to alter his notes of sessions with Erik.

He couldn’t hold that against her client, Erik Menendez, said juror Andrew Wolfberg.

Ted Doughty, 62, a retired school principal, recalled putting “stars and circles in my notes” after the incident. “ ‘Boy, what was omitted, I remember thinking to myself,’ ” he said.

Juror Charles A. Palmersheim, a city surveyor, agreed that the note-changing claims “did not bother us.”

Palmersheim said that while the allegations of parental abuse “carried a lot of weight” with several of the jurors, the panel was never sharply divided on the murder verdict. “At the beginning, some of us were on the fence,” he said, “but the evidence, and the judge’s instructions on how to reach a verdict,” led to the unanimous decision that the brothers were guilty of murder. “No one held out,” Palmersheim said.

Juror Mary Lam Li said she was troubled by “a lot of unanswered questions in my mind” but finally decided based on the evidence before her.

Jurors said the lengthy trial changed some of them.

“I got a great explanation of how to be a parent from some of the greatest experts in the country,” said alternate juror Joseph Lowdermilk, 42.

“It’s taught me valuable lessons. I’ll never look at my children the same ever again.”

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman and correspondent Susan Abrams contributed to this story.