Developments in the retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez from Nov. 27 - Dec. 1.
NOVEMBER 27
After an hour of testimony, a juror raised her hand and complained that she was sick. Judge Stanley Weisberg sent the jurors home. He kept the lawyers to argue over exhibits.
NOVEMBER 28
The sickness of a juror caused court to be canceled for the second day in a row.
NOVEMBER 29
A criminalist testified that engineer Roger McCarthy, who reconstructed the crime scene, reached many conclusions by ignoring much of the evidence.
Ron Linhart, assistant director of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, was the latest defense witness to rebut the reconstruction, the linchpin of the prosecution theory of the killings.
Linhart testified that blood spatter analysis contradicted much of the reconstruction. The blood patterns on the couch, the floor and Kitty Menendez's shoes, he said, showed that the victims must have been standing at some point during the shooting. McCarthy of Failure Analysis Associates previously testified that Jose and Kitty Menendez were sitting down when the shooting began.
Linhart's testimony came after lead prosecutor David Conn accused another Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy of going out of his way to aid the defendants by attacking key prosecution evidence.
Dwight Van Horn, a firearms and ballistics expert, testified earlier that McCarthy's shot-by-shot reconstruction of the slayings was "junk science" because it ignored evidence in some instances and lacked it in others. Van Horn testified for the prosecution in the first trial about the type of shotguns used in the killings.
During cross-examination, Conn suggested Van Horn resented prosecutors using McCarthy'services instead of the sheriffs department, and was therefore biased against the prosecution. Conn accused Van Horn for looking for errors in the state's case to help the defense.
"Who's side are you on?" Conn shouted at one point.
"The side of truth," Van Horn responded.
NOVEMBER 30
A defense expert testified that Jose Menendez may have been standing when he was shot, contradicting testimony by a key prosecution witness.
Forensic scientist Charles Morton, like other defense witnesses who previously testified, said it was impossible to do a crime scene reconstruction in the case. In 1993, after examining the ballistics, blood and crime scene and autopsy photographs, he determined that a reconstruction would be virtually impossible. He went on to say that the reconstruction presented by prosecutors was "ripe with errors and false assumptions."
Morton, a criminalist with the Institute of Forensic Science in Oakland, said some evidence suggested that Jose Menendez was standing when he was shot in the left leg. The victim then spun around and received the fatal wound to the head, Morton said.
The evidence, he said, also indicated that Kitty Menendez may have been standing for several shots in which prosecutors contend she was lying on the floor. He pointed to blood drippings on her left tennis shoe and a broken bracelet piece flung across the room as evidence that she may not have been on the floor.
Whether the victims were standing or sitting is a crucial question in the retrial. Prosecutors contend the victims were seated in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion when they were ambushed by their sons.
But Lyle and Erik Menendez testified at their first trial that the parents were standing when they burst into the living room den, and fired rapidly and randomly out of fear that their parents were going to kill them first.
DECEMBER 1
The jury did not hear any testimony. The lawyers argued over some exhibits and then attorney Leslie Abramson said she could not continue because she was sick. The court was recessed until December 4.
