SECOND TIME AROUND

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

A MAN AND A WOMAN FOUND SLAUGHtered in their luxurious Beverly Hills home. A crime scene soaked in blood. Wealthy, attractive, clean-cut defendants with a seemingly clear motive for the murders. A riveting, controversial and protracted televised trial. And a jury decision that stunned many Americans, who had thought that the only possible outcome of the trial was a guilty verdict. But at least in the case of young Lyle and Erik Menendez, accused of shooting their parents in August 1989, the prosecutors get the chance to try it all over again.

With little fuss, and in a town still nursing a hangover from its last famous murder trial, opening arguments began last week in the Menendez retrial; the original concluded in January 1994 with two hung juries. The outlines of the case remain the same. Lyle and Erik, who were 21 and 18 at the time of the murders, have confessed to shooting their parents Jose and Kitty as they watched television in their Beverly Hills living room. Erik, now 24, will again be represented by Leslie Abramson (although this time she will be paid by the county to the tune of about $10,000 a month, the Menendez millions having been wiped out last time around). And Abramson, along with deputy public defender Charles Gessler, who is lead attorney speaking for Lyle, 27, will again pound home the argument that the brothers killed, as Abramson put it last week, out of "mind-numbing, adrenaline-pumping fear" of their parents.

But a few things are different. In a Simpson ripple effect, Judge Stanley Weisberg has banned cameras from his Van Nuys courtroom. He has also ruled that the brothers be tried together, as the separate juries last time created too much confusion. Abramson--surprisingly, given her penchant for publicity last time around and her telegenic presence for ABC as an expert commentator on the Simpson case--requested and was denied a gag order to prevent the prosecution, or anyone else, from talking to TV reporters about the case. The state's new team, headed by deputy district attorney David Conn, insists that this time the prosecution will focus on the murders themselves, rather than get derailed by the defense's claims that Lyle and Erik were sexually and emotionally abused by their parents.

Conn, an impeccably tailored Clark Kent type who would have done just fine in front of the cameras, says he will offer a "blow-by-blow re-creation of the shootings to depict the horror of the crime and how unnecessary and brutal these killings were." Conn will direct the jurors' attention to the murder of Kitty in particular, who he says got "lost in the shuffle" during the first trial. "Whether or not [the brothers] felt a threat from Jose," says Conn, "there was no reason to believe there was a threat from their mother."

Conn is bringing in a witness who already promises controversy. Roger McCarthy, an engineer from the Menlo Park, California, firm of Failure Analysis Associates, which provided law-enforcement officials with re-creations of the Oklahoma City bombing, will give jurors a CD-ROM presentation featuring grisly autopsy photographs and computer models of the murdered couple. According to Conn, McCarthy has determined the entry angles of the 12 bullets fired into Jose and Kitty and the sequence of the shots, illustrating the intent to kill and bolstering the prosecution's claim that the victims were shot in the knee because the brothers were trying to make the murders look like a Mafia hit. The defense tried unsuccessfully to block McCarthy's testimony on the ground that he has no experience in ballistics or wounds. "McCarthy," said Abramson, suggesting the witness may be something other than he appears, "is the prosecution's Fuhrman."

Abramson is battling for a verdict of manslaughter. "We're not going to get up and say you must acquit because the gloves don't fit," she said during her opening argument. If she succeeds, the brothers, who have been in jail nearly six years, may have already done much of their time. But if Conn manages to convince the seven male and five female jurors that the murders were premeditated--whether motivated by fear, as the defense contends, or greed--then the verdict will be first-degree murder, with a possible sentence of death. He will tell the jury the defendants used false identification to purchase shotguns two days before committing the murders, and that within 24 hours of the crime Erik and Lyle were carrying their murdered parents' safe to the home of a probate attorney, whom they asked to open it so they could see if their parents had changed their wills. Explains Conn: "I wanted the jury to be clear that whether they found that the defendants killed for their own financial independence or whether there is a suspicion in their minds that they killed as a result of some abuse, if they found [premeditation] they can still find them guilty of first-degree murder."

No one knows how long this trial will take. Even without a television audience to play to, the lawyers ran into overtime in their opening arguments. But Conn expects to wrap up the case by Christmas. Of course, even if freed, Lyle and Erik might not have much of a home to return to for the holidays.

--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles