Page 16 - Robert Rand News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The best. especially in sports, i noticed immediately. swimming, soccer, tennis. josé pushes sons to excel and everything. as his own career skyrocketed. >> in the 70s, josé was a general manager of hurts and impress the sons by bringing the company's famous spokesperson o.j. simpson home to dinner. >> holiday was living the american dream. anyone's voice to continue that american dream >> in 1986, jose took a job with -- in los angeles. the company that prove. like basic instinct, and the ramble series. carol cohen, had just bought a video distribution company, from a man named noel bloom. ...

And i -- my thing was, "i'm gonna shoot leslie twice." i felt that the brothers were evil, but not as bad as she was. >> reporter: abramson had a reputation for doing whatever it took. >> you guys haven't been fair to these boys and you're not fair to them now. >> reporter: and she had an unusual strategy for defending the brothers. a law known as imperfect self-defense. >> that is to say under all the circumstances, it was reasonable to the person to think that they were acting in self-defense. but the reality is that that wasn't the case at all. >> reporter: in other words, an honest, but un...

>> that really just was like a punch in the gut. >> reporter: and then, just before the jury went out, judge weisberg's last ruling. and quite possibly, the most important one of all. >> the jurors would not be allowed to consider an imperfect self-defense. judge weisberg, basing his ruling on a california supreme court decision that came down after the first menendez trial, said imperfect self defense didn't apply because the brothers initiated the confrontation with their parents. >> reporter: do you think in retrospect had you been offered imperfect self-defense that you might have maybe st...

In the end, all her efforts did not spare the menendez brothers from a life sentence. >> i think the fairness has been drained out of the system. >> reporter: decades later, that question whether the second trial was fair, is still being debated. >> it's a tale of two trials. the trials couldn't have been more different. >> reporter: cliff gardner was the attorney appointed to handle lyle's appeal. >> so it was sort of a one, two, three punch. no source evidence, no lay -- expert testimony. and then your defense doesn't go to the jury. >> reporter: but it was the same judge in both trials. >> ...

>> reporter: but before that second trial could begin -- oj happened. and suddenly the stakes were even bigger. >> when o.j. went home, we were nationally considered to be losers. >> reporter: the second menendez trial began just eight days after oj's acquittal -- with judge weisberg presiding again. the same judge -- the same case, but this time the trial was fundamentally different. >> the first major ruling judge weisberg made was, "no tv camera in the courtroom." >> reporter: this time, one jury for both brothers. judge weisberg also scaled back testimony about the brothers' alleged physic...