The Menendez brothers’ juror claims the outcome would be very different today

A juror in the Menendez brothers’ trial believes that today’s more educated and brighter world could have saved them – after it was announced Thursday that new evidence alleging the two were sexually abused emerged 30 years after the death Conviction of killing her parents needs to be reviewed.

“If they were tried again, I think the outcome would be very different because people know more and understand more these days,” Hazel Thornton, a juror in the first trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, told Banfield ” from NewsNation.

The Menendez brothers claimed they were acting in self-defense after years of sexual abuse at the hands of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, when they shot them in their Beverly Hills home in 1989 – but Thornton said the men in the Jury would have done this I don’t buy it.

“But the men in the room, it was a classic battle of the sexes. “The men did not believe that Jose had abused his sons,” Thornton, author of the book “Hung Jury: The Diary Of A Menendez Jury,” told guest host Laura Ingle.

Prosecutor Lester Kuriyama also raised the idea that Erik was gay in his closing argument, which Thornton said the male component of the jury may have used against the defendants during deliberations.

“There was no evidence of this. It was just Lester’s theory that he rejected in closing arguments and the men stuck to it and never gave in and accepted the fact that they may have been abused,” she continued.

Thornton is hoping for a resentencing of the brothers convicted in 1996, rather than a new trial.

“I hope it won’t be tried again. I hope they just get re-sentenced because I think a new trial would cost millions of dollars and wear everyone down for no good reason.”