Legal Strategy

Prosecutors in the retrial of the Menendez brothers on Monday previewed a high-tech reconstruction of the Beverly Hills mansion crime scene that shows Jose and Kitty Menendez were executed by their sons, who then shot them in the knees to make the killings look like a mob hit. Deputy Dist. Atty. David P.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation took another step toward rehabilitating its standing in the breast cancer community with the resignation of the executive at the center of the Planned Parenthood funding controversy. In a largely conciliatory letter, Karen Handel, senior vice president for public policy, said Tuesday that she would step down immediately so the organization could "refocus its attention and energies on its mission. " "I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it," Handel wrote, adding that she declined Komen's offer of a severance package.

The strategy was methodical. For more than a dozen years, lawyers for gay and lesbian causes had carefully selected their battlefields, identifying key states for constitutional challenges aimed at broadening their rights. California was not to be one of them -- at least not any time soon -- and marriage was not supposed to be the central legal issue, at least not yet. But over the last two weeks, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dramatically accelerated the legal strategy.

When Maine's highest court ruled two years ago that lesbians Marilyn Kirby and Ann Courtney could adopt the two children they had cared for since 2001, the man who has led the state battle against gay marriage for 25 years got a glimpse of the defeat now looming. "There's a sense people have -- a sense of inevitability -- and a tremendous sense of frustration because of the history of the gay rights fight in Maine," said Michael Heath, executive director of the Maine Family Policy Council.

Santa Ana City Councilman Ted R. Moreno will fight political corruption charges by alleging he was entrapped by the FBI, his attorney disclosed for the first time Wednesday. For two years, Moreno has strongly denied allegations that he extorted thousands of dollars from business owners with issues pending before the City Council. But according to interviews and court papers, Moreno plans to center his legal defense on whether the FBI crossed the line in its two-year corruption probe.

A desperate woman shamed by her cheating husband drowns her young daughter and son in the ocean before being rescued by two beach-goers as she attempts to take her own life. She is not Narinder Virk, an Indian immigrant accused of trying to drown her two children last month in Channel Islands Harbor. But as in the first case, Virk's attorneys will argue that their client's culture and traditions influenced her behavior.

The 12 people assembled around the conference table unanimously agreed someone should pay for what happened to Todd O'Malley. The 5-year-old was gravely injured in a botched delivery, and his parents were suing. The lawsuit said the boy's cerebral palsy was caused by a lack of oxygen during birth. Hospital nurses ignored warning signs during his mother's labor, the suit said, despite knowing hers was a high-risk pregnancy. Twelve hours into labor, her uterus ruptured.

The changes begin with the cosmetic and extend to the profound. Erik and Lyle Menendez, who favored sweaters during their now-famous first trial in a bid to make themselves look younger and warmer, have appeared in court for the last year in shirts and ties--reflecting the fact that they are now 24 and 27.

In a key tactical move, O.J. Simpson's lawyers have removed from their witness list Edward T. Blake, a highly regarded forensic scientist who was expected to be one of the key defense experts attacking the prosecution's DNA evidence in court. Blake is so respected that prosecutors have called him the nation's foremost practitioner of one type of DNA technology and even tried to subpoena him to be their witness late last year, a move rebuffed by Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito.

In 1994, then-Archbishop of Portland William Levada offered a simple answer for why the archdiocese shouldn't have been ordered to pay the costs of raising a child fathered by a church worker at a Portland, Ore., parish. In her relationship with Arturo Uribe, then a seminarian and now a Whittier priest, the child's mother had engaged "in unprotected intercourse ... when [she] should have known that could result in pregnancy," the church maintained in its answer to the lawsuit.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown's decision to throw the weight of his office behind same-sex marriage has sparked debate over whether his arguments will actually do more harm than good for those hoping to overturn the initiative. Brown's request that the California Supreme Court overturn the state's ban on same-sex marriage -- arguing that it undermines fundamental liberties -- has been widely hailed as a victory in the fight for gay rights.

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich met with a renowned Chicago criminal lawyer Saturday as he weighed his legal options on how to fight a scandal that has left his career in tatters and disrupted President-elect Barack Obama's White House transition. The Democratic governor had a four-hour meeting with Ed Genson in the lawyer's downtown office Saturday. Genson has defended newspaper baron Conrad Black, R&B singer R.

At a hearing next month, the words "People versus Roman Polanski" will ring out in a courtroom for the first time in 30 years. Those gathered are certain to include prosecutors, defense attorneys and a throng of reporters, but the Oscar-winning director is not expected. That empty chair at the defense table, experts say, makes his request for a dismissal of the three-decade-old sex charge a legal long-shot.

A Wyoming rancher cannot use the federal racketeering law to seek damages against employees of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management whom he accused of harassment, the Supreme Court ruled Monday . The unanimous decision reversed a federal appeals court ruling. The earlier ruling had government officials fearing that if the high court permitted the case to proceed, it would spawn a bevy of litigation against federal employees merely trying to do their jobs.

THE LAST MONTH hasn't been a good one for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles. First came the release of a documentary, "Deliver Us from Evil," in which admitted pedophile priest and serial molester Oliver O'Grady accuses Mahony of having protected him instead of his child victims. The film has been well received, but Mahony's office says many of the details are untrue.

A day after a divided Long Beach City Council took a step forward on a proposed expansion of Long Beach Airport, opponents of airport growth on Wednesday began to talk about legal challenges. On Tuesday night, the council voted 5 to 2 to accept the environmental impact report on the project.

Timothy J. McVeigh will not use an insanity defense when he goes on trial in the Oklahoma City bombing case, his lawyers said Thursday. "The psychiatric and psychological evaluations aren't 100% completed, but from what we know at this point we have no reason to assert a mental defect," attorney Stephen Jones said. "He's as sane as any lawyer or reporter." He said McVeigh has been pronounced competent by Dr.

Moving to quell months of aggressive protests by animal rights activists outside the homes of city officials, the Los Angeles city attorney's office embarked on a legal strategy Friday that officials conceded would push against the boundaries of free speech protections.

Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court rejected the tobacco industry's "personal choice defense," its most successful argument in wrongful death lawsuits, ruling that the companies cannot shield themselves from liability simply by claiming that smokers should know cigarettes are dangerous. The ruling reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Philip Morris USA by Brenda Haglund, whose husband died of lung cancer in May 2000. The lawsuit had been dismissed by a lower court judge.

Anthony Pellicano's attorney on Monday challenged the federal government's search of the indicted private eye's office, claiming that authorities misled the courts about their reasons for going after the investigator's records.