Developments in the retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez from Nov. 20-22.
NOVEMBER 20
After presenting testimony from 30 witnesses and more than 300 exhibits, the state rested its case-in-chief in the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, charged with first-degree murder for gunning down their wealthy parents.
The cornerstone of the state's case was a computer-generated reconstruction of the August 20, 1989 slayings. The reconstruction by Failure Analysis Associates concluded that Jose and Kitty Menendez were sitting side-by-side on a couch in front of the television in the family's Beverly Hills home when they were fatally shot.
Prosecutors used the reconstruction to try and prove to jurors that the brothers deliberately and methodically killed their parents, and fired several shots at the knees to make the killings look like the work of the Mafia.
The state rested after defense attorney Leslie Abramson, representing Erik Menendez, concluded her cross-examination of Roger McCarthy who created the computer-illustrated exhibit. She accused the prosecution of taking "artistic license" in creating inaccurate diagrams.
The reconstruction is disputed by the defense and contradicted by the brothers' testimony in the first trial. The brothers claimed they were in a blind panic when they shot at their parents, who they said were standing.
The defense opened its case by calling Martin Fackler, considered one of the country's foremost experts on wound ballistics. He spent most of the day testifying that McCarthy's reconstruction could not be considered scientific because it had too many errors. He said no one could design a reconstruction of the Menendez crime scene because there were too many variables.
Fackler also disputed what McCarthy described as the first shot fired at Jose and Kitty Menendez. According to McCarthy, it struck Jose Menendez in the right arm, then the left arm and then into Kitty Menendez's left breast. Fackler said the medical evidence -- x-rays, the wound pattern, exit and entrance wounds -- showed the wounds to Jose Menendez's arms could not be connected to the wound to Kitty Menendez's breast.
NOVEMBER 21
A ballistics expert testified for the defense that the conclusions of an engineer who re-created the crime scene for the prosecution were "contrary to fact and frankly nonsense."
Martin Fackler asserted that it is wrong to assume that shotgun wounds suffered by Jose and Kitty Menendez caused great pain as prosecution witness Roger McCarthy had testified.
McCarthy's computer-generated reconstruction showed the parents sitting side-by-side on a couch when they were fired upon from the left. But Fackler's conclusions about the buckshot trajectories raised the possibility that the parents were standing when they were shot.
During a scathing cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney David Conn suggested Fackler, a surgeon and wound ballistics expert, had a vendetta against McCarthy.
But Fackler insisted that he only wanted to illustrate to the forensic community that engineers such as McCarthy should not be allowed to testify about medical evidence, such as wound patterns and pathology.
Conn also pointed out that even if Fackler had more medical expertise than McCarthy, he had not spent the time that McCarthy had on the case. Conn pressed the point by asking Fackler about every wound described in the autopsy reports. Conn was able to trip up Fackler on numerous points, showing that the witness did not know the case as well as McCarthy.
NOVEMBER 22
The jury heard for the first time the defense version of what happened on the night that Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents.
During redirect examination of ballistics expert Martin Fackler, defense attorney Leslie Abramson presented this scenario:
She told Fackler to assume that when Lyle and Erik Menendez entered the living room, their parents were standing in front of the couch, facing them. Erik moved straight ahead, shooting randomly at his parents as he moved. Lyle was on his brother's right side. He entered the room and turned to his right, firing as he moved. The brothers shot at Jose Menendez from the right side, hitting him in the right and left arms. Then, while he was standing, he was shot in the knee. At some point, Lyle fired a contact shot to his father's head. Jose Menendez's body turned slightly and he collapsed on the couch with his feet crossed. Abramson did not elaborate on the shooting of Kitty Menendez but said she was standing when most of the shots were fired.
After posing the hypothetical, Abramson asked Fackler when the medical and physical evidence at the crime scene supported this version of events. Fackler said it did.
The defense scenario differs sharply from the prosecution's theory that the brothers' methodically shot their parents in the den of the family's Beverly Hills home.
During cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney David Conn suggested to Fackler that it did not make sense that Jose Menendez was standing in front of the couch when he was shot in the back of the right arm, the left leg, and the left elbow before collapsing on the couch in a sitting position.
"Is it your belief he walked over to the couch and sat down?" Conn asked.
"He staggered, walked, rotated, turned. He got there, somehow," Fackler replied.
