Menendez Brothers Murder Case, Ethics, & Mental Health

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel this is dr. Gandhi today's question asks if I can describe the case of the Menendez brothers and kind of the ethical considerations that come around the mental health treatment and confidentiality circumstances in that case so it's really interesting case because of course it involves parricide which is a rare type of homicide where children kill their parents but it's also interesting because it kind of weaves in the mental health components with ethics and confidentiality so I'll discuss this case I'm going to describe some of the information from this case actually quite a bit of it and I have references in the description for this video that I used to make this video so just as a disclaimer before we get to the details with this case I am NOT diagnosing them and then those brothers I've never met them I have met Jerry or Zeile and I'll talk about that but I'm not diagnosing him either or any of the people involved in this whole case so with an end his brother as we see there were two brothers this was back in 99 Lyle who's 21 Lyle Menendez and Eric Mendez who is 18 they lived in the mansion with their parents Jose and Mary Lewis Mary Lewis was referred to as Kitty though so I'm just gonna call her kitty so you have Lyle Eric Jose and Kitty in the same house in Beverly Hills now we have some interesting information about the family and kind of history and again this is just based on reports that I was able to find in the public records and now would include why I was able to find in the library we see that Jose the father here had multiple affairs going on during this time he had a mistress in New York a mistress in Los Angeles and evidently he was engaged with a few prostitutes as well now kitty had some different problems during this time as well it's alleged that she had difficulties with alcohol and one time she was a mid at the hospital after overdosing on valium we see that Eric also appeared to have some difficulties they seem to have difficulties with impulsivity they had committed burglaries and in one burglary over $100,000 worth of property was missing they were arrested convicted and placed on probation Jose the father apparently took away Lyle's credit cards and allegedly he stole those back while stole those back while also created a screenplay that detailed a character who committed a parasite in order to get insurance money we also see reports that Erik and Lyle Menendez from early and childhood may have demonstrated some of these symptoms that we see with the disorder called conduct disorder again I don't know if this was an official diagnosis that anybody gave to them this is just what we see in the reports that they allegedly had some symptoms that lined up with conduct disorder now we also see some strife in the family actually quite a bit we see that Kitty at one point was changing the will and Lyle knew this so kind of a motivation for some sort of criminal act we also see that Lyle alleged that he was abused sexually during his childhood and Eric made the same allegations except for he indicated the abuse took place right up into the murder and we see in new evidence evidence that wasn't considered in this original case that there may be a letter that was written eight months before that by Eric that indicates that he was abused so there may be some again new evidence that wasn't available back then in terms of evidence that was available back then Lyle had apparently told a couple roommates about his abuse so there's really a lot to this case that's just a snapshot of some of the struggles that were occurring within the family as we come up to summer of 1989 so now taking a look at the actual crime as I mentioned before this was a double parasite Lyle and Erik killed their parents and here's what we know again from available documents August 18 1989 the brothers bought two shotguns from a sporting goods store in San Diego then two days later this was a Sunday night August 20th 1989 in the mansion in Beverly Hills we see that the crime took place in the Hosea was seated on a couch in that room asleep and kitty was laying down with her head on his lap one of the brothers aim the 12-gauge shotgun at Jose fired the shotgun and struck him in the left elbow and the right arm the other brother walked up behind Jose and shot him in the back of the head because of the shooting kitty woke up and she tried to flee but she was injured by shots fired by the brothers but she was not killed at that time the brothers went out to their car because they ran out of ammunition before they could kill their mother they reloaded the shotguns with birdshot came back in and shot her in the head several times after Lyle and Erik killed her parents they shot both Jose and Kitty each in the knee so after this they collected the shell casings and they left the home expecting that because of all the shots occurring all the noise from the shotguns that the police would be at the mansion when they arrived back but when they came back home nothing was changed no one was there so they decided to call the police and make an effort to cover up their crimes and they came up with this excuse that they were out at the movies and came back and found their parents murdered so it's interesting that many of the neighbors did hear the shotguns but nobody reported it again it was actually the brothers that decided to call the police according to statements they have made they expected at that time that they would go to prison and that's why they made up the lie that they came home and discovered that their parents had been murdered now it's interesting here because the shotguns are actually in their cars and they had gunshot residue on their hands but the police never looked in their cars and they were never tested for gunshot residue now all these circumstances is actually fairly interesting because again the brothers made it seem like they came up with the idea to cover up the crime afterward but with the shooting both Jose and key in the knee you kind of set up their story which was that the Mafia killed their parents and that's the story they stuck with after the murders allegedly also confessed to a friend but he went to the police and they kind of set him up to go visit Eric again and try to get that conversation going but he didn't confess again Eric didn't confess a second time to that friend he may not have confessed the first time so either way after all this happened the brothers went on a spending spree which of course was used at the trial against them and it's alleged they spent about seven hundred thousand dollars so this seems pretty suspicious and it's reasonable to appreciate this would've been included as part of the prosecution's case now from this point on of course the police did suspect Lyle and Erik the mafia story was disposed of relatively quickly but they didn't have enough evidence to charge them the investigation was kind of stalled and during the same time eric was seeing a clinical psychologist by the name of Lee on Jerome özil Jerry Oziel so at this point kind of an interest of full disclosure I indicated before that I had met Jerry O'Neill on one prior occasion while probably a few times but I don't remember it that's because I met him in 1972 and I was less than one year old at that time so he earned his degree in clinical psychology from Arizona State University PhD in clinical psychology and during that time both of my parents who also have PhDs in clinical psychology were in that same graduate program at Arizona State University and they were friends with Jerry O'Neill and his wife Laura so I was born when my parents were in graduate school and they hung out with Jerry and Laurel Oh seal so technically I met Jo Zeile again many times but I don't remember any of it I think that's understandable given my age and that has really I mean as far as I know created no bias either for or against him as I review this case so either way Eric was being treated by Jerry O'Neill and on Halloween 1989 October 31st Eric confessed to him - Jerry was ill that him and his brother had murdered their parents and when Lyell found this out he threatened Jerry O'Neal's life so he essentially told them don't tell anybody or it would kill him now this Springs about one of most interesting ethical questions that could come out of this case which is what responsibility to Jerry özil have to keep this confidential so it's one thing that Eric told them that he committed the murders now we clearly still be confidential but what about what happens after lyall threatens him well a lot of course came of all this and this really became central to the prosecution's case so I'll tell you what happened and I'll tell you what I think should have happened based on the ethics so here's what happened next in this case so Jerry özil heard this threat and he started tape recording these sessions with the brothers now I mentioned before Jerry O'Neill was married to Laura Oziel and he also had a mistress and her name was Judah land Smith so he asked this mistress Dylan Smith to hang out outside the office and listen in to session so she could hear the brothers talking about the murders so this is what he actually did now after Judah Lin Smith and Jerry O'Neill broke up when there were no longer lovers Judah and Smith went to the police and told her all this and they got a search warrant and I got a hold of those tapes and also Dario's Aeolus notes now as you may imagine this went to court several times we saw different rulings but in the end the California Supreme Court allowed two of the tape sessions to be admitted arguing that dr. özil was acting in self preservation and that no therapy took place in the sessions where these two recordings were made therefore the brothers were not entitled to confidentiality so what they essentially said was that all confidentiality disintegrated when au seals life was threatened so my point here would be did Erik and Lyle believe those sessions were not therapeutic so I told you what happened and I told you I would then reveal kind of what I think should have happened well this is interesting because there is this duty to warn that's in place in the world of mental health treatment so if you have a client that comes to you as a mental health professional and they say they're gonna hurt somebody else you have a duty to warn you have to make an effort to learn the person who may be harmed and notify the police but you don't provide any more information in this situation than is necessary to prevent harm this is based on a case that also occurred in California the Tarasov case and now all the states have laws because of that Tarasov case this is again the duty to warn so I look at this situation is very similar to duty to warn meaning yes Jerry O'Neill could have contacted the police when his life was threatened but he was not allowed to offer any more information than what was necessary to protect his life so certainly recording the sessions and having his mistress listen in on the sessions both of those behavior in my opinion were not consistent with ethics right those appear to be pretty clear breaches of ethics so I think that he had a clear path at the time he was threatened I think you have to at some level give him the benefit of doubt a little bit because having your life threatened is a pretty frightening experience but still his actions seemed very inconsistent with the norms of his profession so this becomes a problem later on I'll talk about this so in 1997 well after this case was already over and completely resolved we see that Jerry O'Neill was accused by a state panel of breaking the rules of confidentiality and he was also accused of having sex with former clients now he surrendered his license to Department of Consumer Affairs Board of psychology but admitted no wrongdoing he actually denied any wrongdoing in that case so he didn't defend the license he just surrendered it so just to be clear there there was never a proceeding we really got to see what the evidence was he was accused and the license was surrendered and that's the end of it so now moving back a few years to the trial so the Menendez brothers were arrested in 1990 they were tried in 1993 and the result we saw in 1994 and here the defense was really about fear about a fight that happened before the murder where Eric talked about his abuse and allegedly Hosea was worried that Eric would tell people so it wasn't about the abuse itself changing the brothers and making them into people that were afraid of their parents it was about rather this threat to their lives that was more immediate that occurred because again of a fight a few days before now 93 and 94 there were actually two separate trials they were tried individually by separate juries and the alleged abuse was admitted the jury did hear about the abuse we see in early 1994 that both juries came back without a decision they were hung juries so that trial was over and there was no verdict in 1995 they were tried by one jury and none of the family history was admissible in that trial so both were tried together again by one jury that did not hear about any of the allegations of abuse in 1996 that jury returned a guilty verdict and there was some aggravating circumstances they added to the conviction of murder which was lying in wait and multiple murders the brothers both received two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole now what's interesting about this second trial is the jurors were interviewed after the verdict was already rendered and they were told about the family history and several said they would have changed their mind if they knew about the history of abuse during the actual trial we also seek have an interesting relationship here with this conviction of murder and another possibility which was manslaughter if they've been convicted of manslaughter they would have likely had been sentenced to about 22 years but of course they're convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole as I mentioned so this becomes interesting because there's now somewhat of a debate about whether they should have been convicted of first-degree murder and I'll talk about this in a moment so before I get to that I want to talk about the moral accountability and then I'll move on to the legal accountability it is important to note that I'm not a lawyer so I'm just really basing these opinions on what I understand from reading the literature in terms of the legal part anyway so for the moral accountability part while we see here there's a few things going on in terms of finding the truth the alleged abusers of course are dead because Lyle and Erik killed them and are not able to refute the allegations of abuse and that's kind of disturbing right like when we look for the truth we want to hear everyone's opinion and of course when somebody commits a parasite like this a double parasite and then accuses their parents of abuse you're never gonna hear the other side of story there so in terms of what could have been going on with mental health or mental state and again this is just speculation not diagnosing we see here that they bought the shotguns as I mentioned two days before the murder these murders appeared to be carefully planned not the result of some sort of uncontrollable impulse or fear-based response in the moment both were active in the parasite so they both fired the weapons and either way of course this would have been a conspiracy we see that when individuals are sexually abused as children we know from the research literature that they tend to be more symptomatic than non abuse children we see symptoms like being fearful symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder behavioral problems poor self-esteem and aggression and of course when the perpetrator is close to the victim as was alleged in this case the symptoms are often more serious because it's a kind of betrayal at a deeper level than if it were a stranger of course both are damaging now something else that's used when kind of considering the moral accountability and also the legal accountability is neither Lyle or Eric disclose the fact they are abused to Gerry özil so for many people this is kind of suspicious when we look at how sexual abuse really works this part really doesn't surprise me it doesn't surprise me if they would have concealed this so if these allegations of abuse were true it doesn't surprise me they would have hid that from dr. Zeile so in terms of moral accountability really again we just kind of weigh these factors there isn't a determination like guilty or not guilty but it is an interesting and a lot of people believe that this case were looked at today the result would have been different than we saw back in 1995 and I believe this is true back then we really have a good understanding of how abuse affects children and how it could lead to some of the things that we saw in this case so that isn't in any effort to defend them just to point out that we have to look at all the evidence when we try to weigh accountability so what about the legal point of view and again this is really sort of the moral point of view too because the law and morals kind of go together well there are really two schools of thought here that I've been able to observe in this case one is that manslaughter would have been a more reasonable charge based on the fact that they were abused and some people believe there wasn't as much premeditation as I think evidence supports I think there was premeditation but some people believe there wasn't and they believe that again manslaughter and 22 years in prison would have been a just outcome in this case others believe that justice was served right these two young men bought shotguns they loaded them they pointed at their parents they fired them multiple times and again went back and reloaded to make sure they could kill their mother highly disturbing so if they spend life in prison that seems like justice a lot of the people have had this opinion I've noticed aren't really interested in the abuse one way or the other so they might have been abused or they might not have been but either way you're talking about double parricide and they have to go to prison for life so those are the two schools of thought I've seen emerge kind of in this case now there are other opinions but I'm looking at the two kind of major opinions here so what do I think well I think that what I believe is probably relatively unimportant in one sense because it's not going to change anything but it may be somewhat important that everyone kind of think about this case because has a lot to say about ethics and justice either way I think that it's unlikely they're going to get any type of different result right they've exhausted their appeals there's some new evidence I mentioned that that supposedly supports the idea that Eric was abused this occurred eight months before the cider was written eight months before the murders but in terms of what's actually gonna happen probably nothing that's unlikely but again to waive ethics and justice and have an interesting debate what's my opinion on this case well my first thought here is I wish that there was a trial for these brothers that include the family history and did not include the tapes I think the family history is relevant because again we know more about the effects of sexual abuse so I wish that could have been presented to a jury and I think the tape should have been in because clearly that was privileged communication when somebody goes to a therapist they assume that the information they tell the therapist is confidential the exceptions are pretty clear and even when the exceptions take place only the information that has to be released is supposed to be released so we can't go back in time and give them what I think would be a fair trial but I think that makes more sense kind of based on our understanding of mental health therapy and privilege and confidentiality I don't think those matters were relieved considered correctly I don't think they were kind of reasoned through at the time but either way I can't go back in time and change that so what about the kind of moral / legal accountability in this case well I can understand the manslaughter thoughts here right the idea that they endured horrible abuse over a long period of time again we know the effect of that abuse if there was evidence to support that I can understand why somebody would say look they committed murder and that's very serious but manslaughter is a serious charge it's a felony they would went to prison for again about 22 years that's a serious penalty I can appreciate that argument at the same time I can also appreciate the argument that justice was served and I think the reason I'm stuck between these two kind of ways of thinking about this case is really because of how they treated the mother so under their claim they were horribly abused by the father and apparently they did make some claims against the mother in trial but really I mean looking at their case it was about the father abusing them now that doesn't justify murder but again that's what they were looking at in this case they were saying they're horribly abused so they kind of committed the crime in a way at a self-defense but what danger did the mother pose right they shot the mother and she wasn't killed and they went and reloaded and then shot her again and that's particularly heinous again even looking at their defense strategy which was based on the father the mother just shouldn't have been involved at all at any level of this no one should have been involved of course because they shouldn't have committed murder but even looking at through their frame of reference if in fact the abuse occurred I don't see how the mother was involved and even somebody to say look will convict them manslaughter for Jose Menendez it was still first-degree murder for the mother also their story isn't quite lineup for me they said they expected to be arrested and they were surprised when the police weren't there and they weren't arrested like the alibi was an afterthought but why shoot both the parents in the knee why kind of set that up for like the Mafia killed them defense why collect the shell casings it seems pretty clear that not only was the crime premeditated but the cover-up was premeditated as well it looks like they wanted people to believe that the cover-up was not premeditated and I just don't buy that based on the evidence that's available so weighing everything we just don't know enough about the abuse we don't know for sure that it occurred and I think that's why I'm really on the fence if I knew more about the abuse if I was sure that occurred I think I may lean more over to manslaughter but where I am now I think justice was served especially with the matricide especially killing the mother just doesn't make sense based on their story so this is one of those I think rare instances where I'm stuck between kind of two popular ways of thought and don't really mean one way or the other so I'd really be curious and I'm always curious if you have any what's on the subject if you looked at this case as I described it maybe other information about the case how do you look at the moral accountability and a legal accountability in this case would manslaughter have been justice has justice been served with life in prison and no possibility of parole I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this so you have thoughts on that or anything else to do with this case or agree or disagree with me on any area please put those in the comments as always I hope you found this description of the Menendez brothers murder case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 491,173

Keywords: Menendez brothers, murder, Lyle Menendez, Eric Menendez, Beverly Hills, Jose and Kitty, hung jury, Leon Jerome Oziel, Jerry Oziel, Dr. Oziel, ethics, breach of confidentiality, Judalon Smyth, first degree murder, premeditated murder, sexual abuse, mental health, state of mind, counseling

Id: qAYbz_9YxOk

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2019