The Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday he will ask the court Friday for resentencing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, decades after the brothers were sentenced to life without parole for the 1989 killings of their parents in Beverly Hills. If the judge accepts his recommendation, the brothers would be immediately eligible for parole, he said.
Gascón held a news conference to announce his decision following growing calls to consider resentencing for the brothers, who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole after they were convicted of first-degree murder in the slayings of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez.
“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said.
He said will ask the judge to consider resentencing the brothers to 50 years to life. Because they committed the crimes when they were under the age of 26 years old, they would be eligible for parole, he said. Gascón said the final decision will be made by the judge, and then it would go before a parole board, which will determine if the brothers should be released.
He said his final decision was made an hour before the news conference.
Gascón said earlier this month that his office had been looking into the Menendez brothers’ case for about a year. The focus of the case has been on why the brothers killed their parents.
During their highly publicized first trial in 1993, prosecutors argued that the murders were committed out of greed, while defense attorneys said the killings were done in self-defense. The brothers admitted they killed their parents but claimed that they had been sexually, emotionally and physically abused by them. Prosecutors suggested those claims were false. A mistrial was declared, and in a second trial, what defense attorneys called evidence of abuse was excluded.
In May 2023, the brothers’ appellate attorney, Cliff Gardner, filed a habeas petition to challenge the convictions. The petition cited a 1988 letter from Erik Menendez to a cousin where he detailed alleged abuse by his father as new evidence.
Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, has also alleged that he was abused by José Menendez, who was an executive at RCA Records, where the band had a recording contract. Gardner has said these circumstances mean the brothers should have been convicted of first-degree manslaughter, not murder, and have received shorter sentences that would have seen them released from prison years ago.
Two recent high-profile Netflix projects have brought renewed attention to the brothers’ case. Gascón said this has helped speed the decision-making process. Some family members have also called for the brothers to be freed. But Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, objected, arguing in a court filing: “The ‘new evidence’ Gascón relies on cannot legally justify overturning the murder convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who meticulously planned and executed the cold-blooded murders of both their parents.”
