NBC
The trial of the Menendez brothers is underway as Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders begins to wind down its first season. I have to say that while the show started out as a cheap take on the FX Network anthology American Crime Story, this shows has gotten consistently better as its proceeded. If I had any other little nits to pick, I’d have to call out some of Edie Falco’s scenery chewing. She’s been just a tad over the top at times, but now that she’s in the courtroom Falco has found a nice balance to her performance. A shame it took five out of eight episodes to get there.
And Falco got to run a whole gamut of emotions this week between the trial, the impending adoption and a family member’s health crisis. In the midst of the trial, Leslie Abramson and her husband learn that the mother they are hoping to adopt from is ready to meet them … and she’s sixth months pregnant. As Jill Lansing notes, they’ll be deep into the trial on three months. How on earth can she be a lawyer and a new mom at the same time? She credits her own mother, in a back-handed way, for not being there for her growing up, making her the strong, self-sufficient woman she is today. And here, Falco gets to show a calmer, more tender and nervous side of Leslie as she and her husband wait nervously to meet the mother.
And just as the trial kicks off, Leslie gets another dose of news, this time not so good. Her mother has suffered a major heart attack and is not expected to survive for too long. But Leslie refuses to fly out to meet her especially after the grief she got from her mother for visiting her father. Leslie is determined to forge ahead with the trial but she eventually has to take a brief leave as mom passes and she feels she at least has to attend the funeral. Again, Falco gets to show a little tenderness as she reunites with her family and apologizes for not coming sooner, but they say her mother never regained consciousness so she wouldn’t have even known she was there. But after the burial, a couple who was friends with Leslie’s mother stops her to say they recognize her from the trial and then give her hell for defending a couple of murderers. Leslie gets tough with them, lays out the abuse the boys suffered and then her dad steps in and shuts them down quickly. And then she’s happily walking away with her fiercest protector.
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In the courtroom (where we got introduced to crime reporter Dominick Dunne, who went on to have his own true crime series on truTV debuting in 2002, with a second season premiere focusing on the Menendez brothers), things aren’t going quite that well for Lyle and Erik as their “friends” Glenn Stevens and Donovan Goodreau willingly perjure themselves during Leslie’s and Jill’s line of questioning. But prior to their testimony, we see Detective Zoeller treating the young men to a night out on the town in Los Angeles, culminating with a visit to a strip club. Before they part ways, Zoeller tells them to remember three words when they’re on the stand: “I don’t remember.” If this part of the story is true, it seems that coaching by the detective in charge of the original investigation would be a bit criminal and should result in a mistrial. But there is one key piece of evidence that was never made public – and interview Goodreau gave to a local reporter admitting that Erik had told him about the abuse, which he denied on the stand. But as the tape had never aired, it could not be used in court. Luckily, the guy who did the interview was there for the trial and Leslie suggested that he knew what the right thing was to do. Before you know it, the tape is playing on the local news and Leslie can then use it in court to prove Goodreau lied. But he still fell back on the “I don’t remember giving that interview” defense and Judge Weisberg didn’t have him charged with perjury.
In fact, Leslie does call for a mistrial because of the obvious hostility towards here from Judge Stanley Weisberg. The judge has already gotten heat from the media for moving the trial to Van Nuys, allegedly so it would be a shorter commute for him, so he’s starting the trial with a bad attitude. He’s also been presented with something unprecedented for that time: the proposal of gavel-to-gavel coverage on cable network Court TV (which is now truTV), a network that launched two years earlier in 1991. The network gained notoriety for the Menendez trial and then become infamous for its O.J. Simpson trial coverage in 1995. Abramson petitions against having cameras in the courtroom because many of her witnesses don’t want their faces plastered all over the media, but the prosecutors have no problem so Weisberg agreed on one condition – no cameraman in the courtroom to distract the witnesses or juries (there were two juries, one for Erik and one for Lyle). But, the remote camera that was installed did distract Weisberg because it moved and made noise. His irritation level was reaching its max.
NBC
Abramson and Lansing had an uphill battle not only with the hostile witnesses, including Doctor Oziel who lied about writing a poem for girlfriend Judelon even though the poem had her name in it (not like that’s a very common name), but with Weisberg as well. The prosecution didn’t buy Abramson’s defense that the sexual abuse led to the murders, especially since that topic had not come up until two years after the killings. Weisberg warned Abramson that if she persisted with a line of questioning with each witness that focused on the “minutae” of the family dynamic, he would shut her down which was what pushed her to call for the mistrial. He refused to grant that motion and when Leslie had a Menendez cousin on the stand and the questioning went to what she did or didn’t know about the abuse, Weisberg shut it down. How this trial was allowed to continue is baffling, but Leslie feels she has made enough of a case for the jury to see that every witness for the prosecution has lied under oath. But is that enough for them to forgive the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez?
Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Brothers airs Tuesday at 10 PM on NBC.
What did you think of this episode? Is the court the least bit interested in a fair trial? Tell us what you think!
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