ERIK and Lyle Menendez could be sentenced to death if jurors decide that the brothers must pay with their lives for the murders of their wealthy Beverly Hills parents.
Firmly rejecting the controversial "abuse excuse" defence that caused the first Menendez trial to end in deadlock, the jury convicted them on Wednesday of first degree murder and conspiracy.
Jurors also decided the defendants had ambushed their parents and committed multiple murders so called "special circumstances" that could bring the death penalty.
The jury will return on Monday to begin hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial and to later decide whether Lyle (28) and Erik (25) will be sentenced to die by lethal injection or spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Judge Stanley Weisberg, who allowed live television coverage of the first trial but banned cameras from the second, imposed a gag order on prosecutors and defence attorneys until the ease is over.
The verdicts, which came after 21/2 weeks of deliberations, showed that jurors were unmoved by defence claims that the brothers killed their parents in self defence after years of sexual and psychological abuse.
It was that line of argument that swayed jurors in the first trial, which ended in a mistrial in January 1994 when two separate panels became deadlocked.
This time, however, jurors apparently embraced the prosecution's portrait of the defendants as greedy, spoiled rich kids who killed Jose and Kitty Menendez to get their hands on the family's $14 million fortune.
Prosecutors were aided by favourable rulings from the bench. The judge decided the defence had failed to prove that the brothers should be accorded the rights of battered spouses who kill out of fear, and he cut short testimony about the Menendez family's troubled history.
But in the penalty phase which could last several weeks the defence will face fewer restrictions and is expected to present more testimony that Jose Menendez, an entertainment industry executive, sexually assaulted his sons from childhood until their late teens.
During the trial, Erik Menendez testified that he and his brother opened fire on their parents because they thought they were about to be killed to hush up a family incest scandal.
The verdict was a badly needed victory for District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who is up for re-election next Tuesday.