What to know as a choose considers the Menendez brothers’ life sentences for his or her dad and mom’ murders
Erik and Lyle Menendez are anticipated to seem nearly in a Los Angeles courtroom starting Thursday for two-day listening to that can study a hotly contested query: Ought to the brothers, who’re serving sentences of life with out the opportunity of parole for the shotgun homicide of their dad and mom in 1989, be free?
Los Angeles County’s former high prosecutor, George Gascón, believed they need to. After greater than three a long time in jail, he referred to as them “mannequin” inmates and, in October, his workplace advisable that Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, be resentenced to 50 years to life, a jail time period that might make them eligible for parole instantly.
That place has been backed by celebrities and most of the victims’ family, who in current months have often spoken out concerning the brothers’ accomplishments in jail and the abuse that they imagine the siblings suffered by the hands of their father, Jose Menendez.
However Gascón was voted out in November, and his alternative, Nathan Hochman, has taken a really completely different view of the case.
Hochman — a former federal prosecutor and normal counsel for a enterprise litigation agency — has stated that after his workplace launched a assessment of tens of hundreds of pages of trial transcripts, jail information and different proof, he concluded that the brothers haven’t taken full duty for his or her crimes.
Final month, Hochman stated he would withdraw Gascón’s suggestion.
In courtroom papers and at a press convention, the district lawyer and his deputies have pointed to 16 “unacknowledged” lies they are saying the brothers have instructed concerning the murders. Amongst these lies, the prosecutors have stated, was the brothers’ declare that they killed their dad and mom in self-defense after Lyle confronted his father about his alleged abuse of Erik.
That declare featured prominently throughout the brothers’ first trial, which ended with a hung jury in January 1994. Throughout their second trial, a high-court ruling barred the brothers from invoking an “imperfect” self-defense, because the authorized doctrine is thought. They had been convicted of first-degree homicide.
Prosecutors who tried the brothers have described the murders as cold-blooded and financially motivated. One of many prosecutors within the second trial, Juan Mejia, instructed NBC Information final yr that their mom could have recognized concerning the alleged abuse and didn’t do something about it.
“However there’s no justification for capturing your mother eight occasions with a shotgun and reloading,” he stated.
Hochman has taken an analogous place and stated that if the brothers “come clear” with the courtroom, their household and the general public, they “could be stated to have totally and fully accepted duty for his or her actions.”
The brothers’ household countered that Hochman’s evaluation was based mostly on “outdated arguments, a deceptive presentation of info, and a deep misunderstanding of the aim of the resentencing course of itself.”
The district lawyer couldn’t undo the method initiated by his predecessor “just because a unique administration is in workplace,” a family-led advocacy group, the Justice for Erik and Lyle Coalition, stated in a launch earlier this month.
The 2 sides squared off throughout a prolonged listening to on the matter final week, with a deputy district lawyer recounting the brothers’ alleged lies and detailing the “severity” of the killings.
The protection centered on the brothers’ deeds whereas incarcerated — they’ve helped inmates with extreme disabilities, accomplished faculty programs and established a inexperienced house “beautification” venture — and criticized the prosecution for exhibiting against the law scene photograph that the lawyer stated “retraumatized” Menendez members of the family who attended the listening to.
The household later stated they wished the district lawyer’s workplace faraway from the case over the picture. Hochman’s workplace apologized for not giving prior warning that the brothers’ conduct can be “described intimately not solely in phrases but in addition via against the law scene photograph.”
On the finish of final week’s day-long listening to, the choose overseeing the case stated either side had sturdy arguments that had been finest saved for this week.
Whatever the listening to’s consequence, the brothers are nonetheless pursuing two different attainable paths to freedom: a request for clemency with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and a petition that cites what the protection group has described as new proof that seeks to overturn the brothers’ convictions. Each efforts stay ongoing.
