A juror on the Menendez brothers’ trial said she believes that today’s world would have been more understanding about the complexity of the trauma suffered by sexual abuse victims — and would have acquitted the brothers of the 1989 murder of their parents.
“If they were tried again, I do think that the outcome would be very different because people know more these days, people understand more these days,” Hazel Thornton, a juror from Lyle and Erik Menendez’s first trial, told NewsNation’s “Banfield” Friday.
The brothers claimed they acted in self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, José Menendez, when they gunned down him and their mother, Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home.
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But Thornton said the men on the jury were not convinced that José, a former top executive at RCA Records, was abusing his sons.
“But the men in the room, it was a classic battle of the sexes. The men did not believe that Jose had been abusing his sons,” Thornton, author of the book “Hung Jury: The Diary Of A Menendez Jury,” said.
Thorton also said she believes that prosecutor Lester Kuriyama raising the theory that Erik was gay in closing arguments played a role in the outcome.
“There was no evidence to back that up. It was just Lester’s theory that he threw out in closing arguments, and the men ran with that and never did back down and accept the fact that they may have been abused,” Thornton said.
The brothers' first trial in 1993 ended in a deadlocked jury; A retrial was ordered in 1995, for which Judge Stanley M. Weisberg prohibited the sexual abuse defense, resulting in a first-degree murder conviction for both siblings.
Both Erik, 53, and his 56-year-old brother, Lyle, are serving life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced on Thursday that his office was reviewing new evidence in the case that José sexually abused his sons.
His office will determine whether the jury would have emerged with a different verdict had they heard the new evidence. A hearing on the matter has been set for Nov. 29.
Attorney Cliff Gardner, who also represents the brothers, said they are hopeful about the district attorney’s decision.
“Given today’s very different understanding of how sexual and physical abuse impacts children — both boys and girls — and the remarkable new evidence, we think resentencing is the appropriate result,” Gardner said in an email Thursday to The Associated Press. “The brothers have served more than 30 years in prison. That is enough.”
