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“Erik and Lyle Menendez‘s positive transformation, as well as their ability to find meaning and purpose from their current confinement illustrate just how much circumstances have changed since the time they were sentenced to Life Without Parole,” states the Los Angeles County District Attorney’ office in its official paperwork recommending resentencing for the nearly three-decade-long incarcerated siblings who murdered their parents in 1989.
First reported exclusively by Deadline and announced on October 24 by D.A. George Gascón at a downtown press conference, the action that could see the Menendez brothers free in a matter of months now sits with L.A. Superior Court Judge William Ryan. If Judge Ryan agrees that the now quinquagenarians deserve to be resentenced to 50 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole, then a parole board will have the final say if the brothers walk free from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.
“The murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in August 1989 although clearly planned, came upon the heels of years of alleged sexual and emotional abuse,” reads the 57-page motion filed late last night and a bit ahead of the timeline laid out by DA Gascón in Thursday’s press conference. “Removed from the horror of what was described to have occurred in the family home, both Erik and Lyle Menendez have shown themselves to be empathetic individuals who care for and participate in the community for the betterment of the collective.”
“Defendants have demonstrated they no longer present a public safety risk …such that their current sentence is no longer in furtherance of justice,” added Resentencing Unit Deputy-in- Charge Nancy Theberge and Post Conviction and Litigation Assistant Head Deputy Brock Lunsford on behalf of their reelection-seeking boss Gascón.
With that, the cases of Erik Menendez, 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, garnered a surge of new attention stemming in large part from new evidence revealed in a Peacock documentary last year, plus a swarm of TikTok videos, advocacy from Kim Kardashian and Ryan Murphy’s very successful nine-part Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
In possession by the divided office of poll-struggling Gascón for almost a year, the new-ish evidence includes claims that music exec Jose Menendez sexually assaulted at least one member of the boy band Menudo in the 1980s. More significantly, there is also a 1988 letter that Erik Menendez wrote to one of his cousins of the repeated sexual abuse he suffered from his father. The handwritten correspondence was sent over eight months before the brothers shot their parents to death in their Beverly Hills home. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy,” the then 18-year old Menendez wrote to his relative of the attacks by his “overweight” father.
Thursday’s filing also lists at length the programs and rehabilitation as well as the “self work,” the Menendez brothers have engaged in over the 30-years they have been behind bars. Those extensive programs for themselves and fellow inmates include “despite not having a documented history of alcohol or substance abuse, Erik Menendez has aggressively engaged in sobriety maintenance programming.”
“Both men have been incredible contributions to the prison system as a whole and to their fellow inmates on a very personal level,” the prosecutors declare.
Though reports of the alleged sexual abuse in the Menendez home was allowed in the brothers’ first trial (which ended in a mistrial), it was barely mentioned in the 1996 second trial that saw the duo sentenced to life in prison without parole.
As he has in recent weeks, Gascón’s rival for the DA gig wasted no time this week lambasting the incumbent for his moves in the Menendez case at this time.
“He has waited until days before the November 5 election, 30 points down in the polls with articles coming about how his failed policies have led to additional murders of innocent people, to release his recommendation for resentencing,” ex-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman said in an October 24 statement. “By releasing it now, Gascón has cast a cloud over the fairness and impartiality of his decision, allowing Angelenos to question whether the decision was correct and just or just another desperate political move by a D.A. running a losing campaign scrambling to grab headlines through a made-for-TV decision. Angelenos and everyone involved deserve better.”
