LA prosecutor to request Menendez brothers resentencing
Lyle and Erik Menendez were jailed for life in the 1990s over the grisly murder of their allegedly abusive parents. Now they could be free in months.
Prosecutors recommended on Thursday that Erik and Lyle Menendez be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home, providing the brothers with a chance at freedom after 34 years behind bars.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon announced during a Thursday news conference that his office would recommend the brothers receive a new sentence of 50 years to life. Because they were under 26 years old at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately, he said.
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Resentencing must now be approved by a judge, and the state parole board would have to sign off on the brothers’ release.
“I came to a place where I believe, under the law, resentencing is appropriate,” Mr Gascon said, adding that some members of his office oppose the decision.
Prosecutors filed the petition on Thursday and a hearing before a judge could come within the next month or so.
The Menendez brothers were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Lyle, then 21, and Erik,then 18, admitted they fatally shot their entertainment executive father, Jose Menendez, and their mother, Kitty Menendez. The brothers said they feared their parents were about to kill them to stop people from finding out that Jose Menendez had sexually abused Erik for years.
The brothers’ extended family has pleaded for their release, saying they deserve to be free after decades behind bars. Several family members have said that in today’s world – which is more aware of the impact of sexual abuse – the brothers would nothave been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life.
Multiple members of their extended family, including their aunt, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, sat in the first few rows of Thursday’s news conference. Ms VanderMolen was Kitty
Menendez’s sister and has publicly supported her nephews’ release.
Family members said they flew across the country on six hours’ notice to be in attendance.
Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the brothers, would not say whether he had spoken to Lyle and Erik on Thursday but said he believes they have heard about the district attorney’s decision.
Mr Geragos said a “re-entry plan” has already been drafted if the brothers get released, to help them reacclimatise to being free.
Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez, said the district attorney’s “brave and necessary” decision means “Lyle and Erikcan finally begin to heal from the trauma of their past”.
Not all Menendez family members support resentencing. Lawyers for Milton Andersen, the 90-year-old brother of Kitty Menendez, filed a legal brief asking the court to keep the brothers’ original punishment.
“They shot their mother, Kitty, reloading to ensure her death,” Ms Andersen’s lawyers said in a statement on Thursday. “The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was just, and the punishment fits the heinous crime.”
Despite their life sentences, Mr Gascon said the brothers worked on redemption and rehabilitation inside prison. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.
Though Kitty Menendez was not accused of abusing her sons, she appears to have facilitated the abuse, according to her sons’ legal filings. One cousin testified during the brothers’ first trial that Lyle told her he was too scared to sleep in his room because his father would come in and touch his genitals. When the cousin told Kitty Menendez, she “angrily dragged Lyle upstairs by his arm”, the petition said.
Another family member testified that when Jose Menendez was in the bedroom with one of the boys, no one was allowed to walk down the hallway outside.
The Menendez brothers were tried twice for their parents’ murders, with the first trial ending in a hung jury. Prosecutors at the time contended there was no evidence of molestation, and many details in the story of sexual abuse were not permitted in the second trial.
The district attorney’s office also said back then that the brothers were after their parents’ multimillion-dollar estate.
The Menendez case has gained new traction in recent weeks after Netflix began streaming the true-crime drama, Monsters: TheLyle and Erik Menendez Story.
AP
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