What the Menendez Brothers and Epstein Cases Have in Common

"Judge Ryan found that this evidence was not compelling enough to have changed the outcome by either producing reasonable doubt in the mind of a juror or negating the finding of premeditation and deliberation. But when the brothers testified to the sexual abuse at their first trial, more than one jury member did indeed find it compelling. That jury could not reach a verdict. It was in the second trial, when testimony on sexual abuse was excluded, that a guilty verdict was returned."

"In the petition for a new trial, the prosecutor objected to the evidence on the basis of timeliness, stating that the letter was decades old. "Timeliness" is much less central to the question of what led to the murder than the profound impact of the abuse that occurred repeatedly. The denial of a new trial seems to rest on technical issues, rather than on the circumstances that arise from chronic sexual abuse."

Judge Ryan denied the Menendez brothers' petition for a new trial despite lawyers presenting a letter from Erik and a declaration from Roy Rosselló alleging sexual abuse by José Menendez. The judge concluded the newly presented evidence would not have produced reasonable doubt or negated premeditation and deliberation. A prior jury that heard abuse testimony deadlocked, while the second trial excluded that testimony and resulted in guilty verdicts. The prosecutor objected on timeliness grounds, noting the letter's age. The denial rests largely on technical objections and downplays the potential causal role of chronic sexual abuse and societal avoidance of its harms.

Read at Psychology Today