Developments in the retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez from Jan. 3 - 5.
JANUARY 3
The trial resumed with the prosecution trying to undermine the key defense claim that Lyle and Erik Menendez feared their parents were going to shoot them.
Erik admitted under questioning by Deputy District Attorney David Conn that he did not actually see his father coming towards him moments before he and his brother shot their parents on August 20, 1989. Erik said the fear that his life was in danger made him believe it.
Conn also suggested to jurors that if Erik really thought his life was in danger, he would have looked around the living room den for guns after the killings. Erik said he did not do so until about an hour later, after returning from an alibi-establishing trip to a movie theater.
JANUARY 4
The continued cross-examination of Erik Menendez focused on what he told his former friend Craig Cignarelli.
Erik conceded that he confessed to Cignarelli that he killed his parents. But he said that he didn't tell him any details of how the killings were carried out.
During the first trial, Cignarelli said Erik told him that he and Lyle went into the den and found their parents sitting on the couch. Lyle shot Jose Menendez and then told Erik to "shoot Mom," according to Cignarelli's testimony.
Cignarelli has not been called as a witness for the retrial, but Deputy District Attorney David Conn used excerpts from his 1993 testimony to cross-examine Erik, who denied making the statements.
The defense was angered by the prosecution's use of Cignarelli's earlier testimony. Defense attorneys say the prosecution knew Erik would deny the statements but asked him about them anyway in order to get Cignarelli's testimony before the jury without calling him as a witness. The prosecution did not call Cignarelli as a witness because his credibility was damaged during the first trial. Judge Stanley Weisberg ordered the prosecution to subpoena Cignarelli to at least show some intention of calling him as a rebuttal witness. But, the state is not obliged to call him and most believe he will never take the witness stand.
Cignarelli's testimony differs dramatically from the brothers' version of the August 20, 1989, shotgun slayings.
The brothers claim that right before the shootings, Lyle warned Erik, "It's happening, it's happening now" because the siblings believed their parents were on the verge of killing them. The brothers also claim their parents were standing and moving toward them at the time, and that they fired in a blind panic.
Also Thursday, Conn pressed Erik about why he confessed the killings to his therapist, but never told him about the molestation or the brothers' fears that their parents were going to kill them. Conn insisted that Erik and Lyle made up the abuse and fear after they were jailed in March 1990.
Conn said it didn't make sense that Erik would keep the molestation from Jerome Oziel, "leaving him with the impression that you stormed into that room and killed for no good reason."
Erik said he was guilt-ridden about the killings, and needed to unburden himself on someone. But as for the sexual abuse, "I wanted to bury that forever."
JANUARY 5
There was no testimony because a juror had a family emergency. Instead, the lawyers continued arguing over whether the defense can introduce videotapes of Lyle Menendez's testimony from the first trial.
