Developments in the retrial of Lyle and Erik Menendez from January 22-26.
JANUARY 22
A defense witness testified about the diagnostic tests Erik Menendez took to determine his level of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Dr. John Wilson said Erik scored higher that most PTSD victims in the categories of intense anxiety, dissociation and impaired self-esteem. Erik scored highest in the area that measures "trauma from an intrusive experience" -- a result, Wilson said, of prolonged sexual abuse at the hands of his father.
Dr. Wilson also testified that Erik scored lower than the average PTSD profile in hostility, irritability and anger. He told jurors that Erik tended to be more passive than angry and that he never expressed any anger towards his parents throughout his childhood or during the days before the fatal shootings of Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Dr. Wilson, director of the Center for Stress & Trauma in Cleveland, evaluated Erik's claim after interviewing him for 30 hours. Wilson also testified that Erik scored zero on a "homicidality" test administered in December. The test showed that Erik, even at the time he killed his parents, did not have homicidal impulses or fantasies, the witness said.
JANUARY 23
Defense attorneys demanded a mistrial after the prosecution began its cross-examination of a key defense expert witness.
The defense request came after prosecutor David Conn asked Dr. John Wilson whether he knew that one of Erik Menendez's lawyers had written a book about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The prosecution believes that Erik does not suffer from the disorder and has fabricated the defense. The defense argued that Conn made an improper inference that defense attorney Barry Levin was selected to help represent Erik because he is a PTSD specialist, and that he provided Erik with literature and perhaps coached him on the disorder.
Dr. Wilson, director of the Center for Stress & Trauma in Cleveland, previously testified that Erik suffers from the disorder as a result of prolonged sexual and physical abuse.
Judge Stanley Weisberg denied the request for a mistrial and instead told jurors to disregard the question about the book.
Outside of court, Levin was confident that an appeals court would throw out any convictions in the case.
The defense insists that California law says you can't use a defendant's choice of attorney against him. And, you can't suggest that a defendant chose a particular attorney to gain an unfair advantage. But Conn said that he only responded to the defense's suggestion that Erik did not have access to literature about PTSD and therefore could not have made up the defense.
Erik and his brother Lyle have admitted killing their parents on August 20, 1989. The brothers claim they feared for their lives after years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Prosecutors contend they killed to get the family fortune.
Erik testified earlier in the retrial that his father sexually molested him for 12 years. Lyle also claims he was sexually abused by his parents, but has not yet testified at the retrial. The brothers claim they thought their parents were going to kill them because Lyle had threatened to expose his father as a child molester.
JANUARY 24
Prosecutor David Conn questioned a key defense witness about the results of psychological diagnostic tests given to Erik Menendez.
When Conn pointed out that it would be easy to lie in answering the test questions, Dr. John Wilson responded that he had to rely on Erik's word as the basis of most of the test results. Conn's inference was that the test results are not valid if Erik was lying.
For example, Dr. Wilson testified that Erik scored zero on a "homicidality" test administered in December. The test showed that Erik, even at the time he killed his parents, did not have homicidal impulses or fantasies. But, Conn referring to the doctor's notes of his interviews with Erik, pointed out that Erik previously told Dr. Wilson that he had a fantasy about killing his father by smashing his head with a tennis racket.
So Conn asked the witness why he never confronted Erik with this revelation when Erik scored zero on the "homicidality" test. Dr. Wilson said he did not consider the tennis racket fantasy a serious thought of killing someone.
Wilson conceded that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not cause a person to become homicidal, and that the majority of PTSD patients who commit homicide are Vietnam War veterans.
JANUARY 25
A key expert defense witness completed his testimony after seven days on the witness stand.
Dr. Wilson, director of the Center for Stress & Trauma in Cleveland, testified that Erik suffers from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of prolonged sexual and physical abuse. He also said Erik was suffering from the disorder when he and his brother Lyle shot their parents on August 20, 1989.
The prosecution tried to discredit Dr. Wilson by questioning the validity of the tests used to diagnose Erik's illness.
JANUARY 26
In response to objections from the prosecution, Judge Stanley Weisberg cut six witnesses from the defense list, ruling that they are irrelevant in the current trial, although they did testify at the first trial. The witnesses include Lyle and Erik's teachers, friends and a coach, and all would have testified about the parents' alleged psychological mistreatment of the brothers. The judge ruled that the issue of psychological mistreatment is irrelevant in the current trial.
Judge Weisberg had already ruled during pretrial hearings that several similar witnesses -- coaches, teachers and friends -- would not be allowed to testify. According to the defense, the judge has eliminated 25 people from its original witness list.
Four witnesses did testify on Friday:
Andy Cano, Erik's cousin, testified that when Erik was about 12 years old, he told Andy that his father was "massaging his dick." Cano also said that Erik always had bruises on his upper thighs -- a result of Jose's constant beatings, according to the defense.
Norman Puls, Erik's math tutor from 1987-89, testified that Erik had had periods when he "zoned out" -- one noted symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Noel Nedley, Erik's roommate after the killings, said that he'd heard tape recordings Kitty Menendez had made of Erik's phone conversations. Erik testified that one of the reasons he was so afraid of his mother is that she knew things about him that he thought she had no way to know. As it turned out, after the killings Erik discovered that his mother had been tapping his phone.
Marta Cano, Jose Menendez's older sister, testified about a $650,000 life insurance policy she wrote for Jose. Because Kitty died also, Lyle and Erik were the beneficiaries of the policy.
