Developments in the retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez from March 27 - 29.
MARCH 27
The penalty phase of the trial opened with Erik and Lyle Menendez's aunt tearfully pleading with the jury to spare her nephews' lives.
Teresita Baralt said Jose and Kitty Menendez were her best friends but that she did not agree with how the couple raised their children. She said they were too hard on their sons in sports and school and never showed any affection towards Lyle and Erik.
"I can't see how nobody can see why it happened," said Baralt, the sister of Jose Menendez. "There have to be powerful reasons for it to have happened. These kids are not killers." She said that executing the brothers would mean the "wiping out ...the destruction of the rest of my family."
Erik, 25, and Lyle, 28, were convicted last week of first-degree murder in the 1989 shooting deaths of Jose and Kitty Menendez. The jury of eight men and four women now must decided whether they should be sentenced to life in prison without parole or death by lethal injection.
Baralt's testimony followed opening statements by both sides in the case.
Deputy District Attorney David Conn, in brief remarks, told the jury that the circumstances of the murders were aggravating enough to send the brothers to death row.
During her opening statement, defense attorney Leslie Abramson seemed angry and almost defeated. She told jurors that she did not what to say since they already had rejected her arguments during the guilt phase of the trial.
She said he job now was not a lawyer's job, but God's job. And they don't teach you about that in law school. At that point, Judge Stanley Wesiberg interrupted Abramson and told her to stick to the evidence in the case.
Abramson ended her statement by saying that four lives have been destroyed, no matter what the jury decides.
"I think you'll find more grief is not necessary," she said.
MARCH 28
In a heated and highly emotional confrontation, Jose Menendez's sister berated prosecutors for seeking the death penalty against her nephews.
"I wanted to save these two boys. You wanted them dead," Teresita Baralt told prosecutor David Conn. "You're getting what you wanted. Now you want me to sit back and say okay."
Earlier, Conn had attacked Baralt for not cooperating with the prosecution's effort to portray Kitty and Jose Menendez in a positive light.
Baralt testified that the family was devastated by the murders, but felt even worse when Lyle and Erik were convicted last week of first-degree murder. She said sentencing the brothers to death would cause more grief to a family already grieving.
"The family members do not want any more blood. This is our family, not your family," she said. And I'm the one that's hurting, not you."
Baralt is among several Menendez family members who have supported the brothers since their arrests for the August 1989 slayings of their parents in the family's Beverly Hills home. But she insisted that she would not lie for them.
"If I lie here, I will have to go back and look my kids in the face. I don't lie," she said.
Baralt and her husband, Carlos, were close with Jose and Kitty Menendez when the two families lived in New Jersey and New York during the 1970s and '80s.
In other testimony, Lyle and Erik's former tennis coach, Charles Wadlington , told jurors that Jose worked his children too hard on the tennis courts because he wanted them to become nothing less than national champions.
"He said winning was everything. Finishing second was like kissing your sister," Wadlington said, adding he told Jose that he should not push his sons so hard because they might crack under the pressure.
"He got in my face and said, `You're naive, and you don't know what you're talking about, and you're fired, " Wadlington said.
MARCH 29
The defense continued to present testimony to show that Lyle and Erik Menendez were troubled young boys who grew up in constant fear of their parents.
The witnesses testified during the first trial but were barred from testifying during the guilt phase of the retrial by Judge Stanley Weisberg.
The first witness was Jessica Goldsmith, a childhood friend of the brothers. She told the jury about the time that 8-year-old Lyle got stuck hanging from a beam. Instead of helping his son down, Jose Menendez poked Lyle in the stomach and said, "you'll stay up there until you learn to be a man, until you learn not to cry," according to Goldsmith.
The brothers' cousin, Alan Andersen, told the jury that Jose tried to teach 6-year-old Erik how to ride a bicycle by forcing him on the bike and pushing him down a slope. Andersen said that after Erik cried, fell down and hurt his leg and elbow, Jose forced him back on the bike and down the hill over and over again.
Bonnie Hunter, one of Erik's teachers, testified that he would cry in class in the 9th grade when the teacher announced a test or if he got a poor grade. Hunter said Erik was the most nervous and anxious student she had during her 30 years as an English teacher.
Sandra Sharp, the brothers' high school Spanish teacher, then testified that Lyle seemed anxious about his grades and once told her that "my father will kill me if I don't make the headmaster's list." Sharp also said Erik had learning disabilities but that his parents refused to deal with them.
