MENENDEZ RETRIAL RANKS AMONG COSTLIEST.Byline: David Bloom David Bloom (May 22, 1963 – April 6, 2003) was an NBC journalist (co-anchor of Weekend Today and reporter) until his sudden death in 2003 at the age of 39. Early life Daily News Staff Writer The retrial retrial n. a new trial granted upon the motion of the losing party, based on obvious error, bias or newly-discovered evidence. (See: newly-discovered evidence) of Lyle and Erik Menendez Joseph Lyle (Lyle) Menendez (born January 10, 1968) and brother Erik Galen (Erik) Menendez (born November 27, 1971) were convicted in a highly publicized trial for the shotgun murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, residents of Beverly Hills, California. was the fourth-most expensive trial in Los Angeles County history, costing nearly $1.6 million over eight months. The case ranks behind the county's, and possibly the nation's, two most expensive trials, said Principal Auditor-Accountant Rick Vandenberg, who compiled the figures from the district attorney, sheriff, public defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was and Superior Court. Those trials are the 6.5-year, $13.2 million McMartin Preschool molestation molestation n. the crime of sexual acts with children up to the age of 18, including touching of private parts, exposure of genitalia, taking of pornographic pictures, rape, inducement of sexual acts with the molester or with other children, and variations of these trial and the 14-month, $9.3 million double murder trial of O.J. Simpson, Vandenberg said. Given the extraordinary expense of the Simpson trial in a far shorter period than the McMartin case, Vandenberg said it is considered the county's most expensive trial. The only other case to cost more than the Menendez trial was the serial murder prosecution of Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker. That trial cost about $1.8 million, Vandenberg said. The county's records of high-profile, high-cost cases go back to the $592,000 the county spent on the 1969 conviction of Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, Vandenberg said. Although the Menendez brothers relied on county funds to pay for their attorney and forensic evidence, unlike Simpson's team of lawyers, the defense was so circumscribed circumscribed /cir·cum·scribed/ (serk´um-skribd) bounded or limited; confined to a limited space. cir·cum·scribed adj. Bounded by a line; limited or confined. by the judge that it had little chance to run up huge bills, Vandenberg said. In all, the sheriff spent $354,935, the district attorney $363,733, the Public Defender $342,446 and the Superior Court 503,702, according to Vandenberg's figures. |
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