Abramson Denies Ordering Rewrite of Doctor’s Notes

Embattled defense lawyer Leslie Abramson said Thursday that she never told psychiatrist William Vicary to “erase,” “evaporate” or “rewrite” any notes of his sessions with Erik Menendez, as she responded in detail for the first time to allegations that temporarily threw the Menendez trial into turmoil and raised ethical questions.

What she told Vicary, Abramson said in an interview, was to redact only information, such as Erik Menendez’s sexual history, that Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg already had ruled inadmissible at the Menendez brothers’ first trial, which began in 1993.

Vicary, she insisted, was acting on his own when he deleted sections of his notes that included Erik’s statements that he hated his parents and wanted them out of his life.

“I never told him to take those statements out,” Abramson said. “Absolutely not.”

As Vicary and Abramson spoke in separate interviews Thursday, providing new information about the controversy, they agreed that he alone decided to alter pages of his notes of sessions with Erik and destroy the originals, and that Abramson had no knowledge he had done so.

But their two versions continue to differ in some key areas.

Vicary testified that he deleted 24 statements and rewrote 10 pages of his notes on subjects such as Erik Menendez’s hatred for his parents, his sexual history and his father’s cutting off funds for his tennis lessons and his brother’s hairpiece.

On Wednesday, a jury in Van Nuys spared Erik and Lyle Menendez from the death penalty, deciding that they should spend the rest of their lives in prison for the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun murders of their wealthy parents.

Abramson and Vicary were the only two present at a November 1993 meeting during which the psychiatrist’s notes were discussed, and they tell different stories.

Abramson’s version emerged Thursday, the first time she has spoken in depth about the episode since invoking her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in court two weeks ago. She later revoked that right but cited attorney-client privilege as the reason for her continued silence.

Weisberg launched an inquiry after Vicary’s bombshell testimony April 4 that he altered his notes of sessions with Erik Menendez under pressure from Abramson.

In interviews Thursday, Abramson recalled that she met with Vicary several days before his testimony Dec. 1 and 2, 1993, in Erik’s first trial, which ended with a hung jury.

“I tell him there are certain things the court has said are inadmissible and irrelevant and I want to redact those things. Now I do not tell him erase. I do not tell him evaporate. And I never tell him rewrite. He doesn’t even have to change his originals to do that,” Abramson said.

She said she now regrets invoking her privilege against self-incrimination, but didn’t know what else to do at the time. Her primary interest, she said, was protecting Erik’s legal rights.

“Things are happening very fast. I am in total shock of what this witness has just said,” Abramson recalled. “We’re extremely chaotic, stressful, confusing, hard to think. . . .”

“I don’t know how commonplace it is to have your psychiatric expert turn on you and lie on you in the middle of a trial,” she laughed. “He has a guilty conscience that he rewrote his notes? That’s his problem.”

But Vicary offered this view:

“I know that’s what she’s saying, and I honestly believe that she remembers it that way, but that’s not my memory,” Vicary said. “I would never, ever take anything out of my notes that I think is important.”

Abramson also disputed Vicary’s testimony that she threatened to take him, the psychiatrist who had been treating Erik Menendez since June 1990, off the case if he did not follow her directions.

“I’ll tell you precisely what I said,” Abramson commented. “ ‘We’re gonna go through the notes. I’m calling you for a very limited purpose. If there are things that are inconsistent, you’re not going to testify,’ ” she said.

“Sadly,” she added, “he just wanted to be involved. He wanted to be there. I don’t think it has anything to do with being involved with Erik. I think he wanted to be on television.”

Vicary, however, said he was on the horns of a moral dilemma. On the one hand, he said, he thought he had important information to give Erik’s jury. But, he said, Abramson’s pressure to edit his notes bothered him ethically. He chose to edit the notes rather than to “abandon” his client.

“She said I wouldn’t testify,” Vicary said. “That’s the reason I made the judgment to do what she wanted. I felt if I didn’t, the crucial information I had about how sick Erik was in the beginning, about his medication, and how the molestation came out” would never be heard.

“I don’t blame her for saying these things,” Vicary said. “I think she’s in a much more difficult situation than I am, although, as I said in court, I am assuming 50% of the responsibility of this. I’m not interested in disputing her. She’s going to say what she remembers. I remain respectful and supportive of her.”

Vicary said that ultimately the items deleted were of “no consequence” to the outcome of the penalty phase, or to his treatment of Erik.

“This whole episode was stupid and counterproductive,” Vicary said.

He said he believed Abramson’s judgment was affected by her closeness to her client. “She became close to Erik, became like his surrogate mother. I think she grew to love him and that affected her judgment,” he said.

Prosecutors have indicated they might look into the incident, but had no comment Thursday.

Legal analysts said the dispute could be the result of a misunderstanding, or a case of “he said/she said.”

They said the fallout from the Vicary episode could result in anything from a reprimand of Abramson by the State Bar of California to a criminal prosecution. But many lawyers agreed that deliberate document-tampering would be difficult to prove.

“I think we could have anticipated this as a swearing contest, Vicary’s word versus hers, and we already know Vicary’s word is suspect,” Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson said, referring to the fact that Vicary has admitted to unethical conduct in court.

“I don’t know whether they might each have an honest recollection of what occurred,” she said, “but because of this major miscommunication, it makes it look like one of them is lying.”

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella, like Levenson, agreed that Abramson’s behavior was more consistent with truth-telling. They point out that she personally handed over a copy of Vicary’s original notes earlier this year to prosecution psychiatrist Park Dietz, who analyzed Erik at the Beverly Hills police station.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the State Bar in Sacramento said that organization is “not going to do anything at all until the court proceedings are completed.” Formal sentencing has not been done yet.

“We are not just going to leap into anything without giving people the due process that is deserved,” Anne Charles explained.

She said internal procedures include reviewing all relevant information and bar rules.

“A lot that is coming at us is coming at us through the media,” she said. “That is not the way we would open an investigation. We would look at some original documents, look at the court records, look at the transcripts.”

She said the bar will not reveal if a complaint has been filed against Abramson, but might announce an investigation if it opens one. She noted that the bar can launch an investigation without a complaint.

Columnist Bill Boyarsky contributed to this story from Los Angeles, and legal affairs writer Maura Dolan reported from San Francisco.

* LEGAL LESSON: Attorney learns difference between the law and L.A. law. B1