Defense lawyers for Lyle and Erik Menendez rested their case, winding up a three-month account of abuse and incest that the brothers contend led to the mansion slayings of their wealthy parents.
Prosecutors, who spent only a month on their initial presentation, plan to call at least 10 rebuttal witnesses beginning today.The prosecution had earlier steered clear of the molestation issue. Now, rebuttal witnesses were expected to suggest the brothers invented the story of abuse.
In their presentation that wound up Thursday, the brothers' lawyers called 56 witnesses to testify before their two juries about the 1989 shotgun slayings in a Beverly Hills mansion.
Erik, 22, and Lyle, 25, each spent two weeks on the stand admitting they shot their parents to death on Aug. 20, 1989. They explained their action by giving jurors an account of sexual and psychological torture.
The brothers contend they killed because they had threatened to go public about their father's molestation and saw signs the parents would kill them to avoid a scandal.
They depicted their father as a tyrant and their mother as a troubled woman with a drinking and drug problem who resented and neglected her children. Other witnesses included teachers, coaches and relatives who described an unhappy relationship between the sons and their parents.