Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has moved up his timeline on making a call concerning the destiny of the Menendez brothers.
Gascón beforehand introduced in October that his workplace was reviewing the 2023 habeas corpus petition filed by Erik and Lyle Menendez, which accommodates new proof and asks for a resentencing of the brothers who’re at present serving life in jail with out parole for the 1989 murders of their dad and mom, José and Kitty Menendez. He had beforehand set a listening to date for Nov. 29.
However talking to CNN on Tuesday, Gascón, who’s at present up for re-election, mentioned he’ll decide on the brothers’ resentencing by the top of this week, citing the rising public push to launch the brothers as his reasoning.
A press convention has now been set for Thursday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. in downtown Los Angeles.
“I plan to have a decision by the end of this week,” he had advised Jake Tapper, “which is what I promised when we started getting a lot of inquiries. We had been looking at this case for over a year, by the way. We had a court time late November on the habeas, but given the public attention to this case, I’ve tried to come up with a decision earlier than that and I will.”
That announcement adopted the lately renewed curiosity within the decades-old case, thanks largely to the TikTok motion of help round Erik and Lyle and the hit Netflix drama collection from Ryan Murphy, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, in addition to the following Netflix documentary that interviewed the brothers collectively for the primary time in many years following their 1996 first-degree homicide conviction. Monsters shortly topped Netflix’s international TV charts and has amassed hundreds of thousands of viewers since its late-September launch.
The habeas consideration might be the Menendez brothers’ final alternative, as they’re out of appeals. Gascón mentioned his workplace is break up on the end result. “There are actually two different camps in my office,” he advised Tapper. “I have a group of people, including some who were involved in the original trial, that are adamant that they should spend the rest of their life in prison and that they were not molested. I have other people in my office that believe, actually, that they probably were molested and that they deserve to have some relief.”
The newly uncovered proof that led to the habeas petition features a recovered letter written by a then-17-year-old Erik to his cousin Andres “Andy Cano” in 1988, eight months earlier than the murders and by no means introduced up within the mid-Nineteen Nineties trials, that corroborates the brothers’ self-defense claims of ongoing abuse from their father; in addition to an abuse declare towards José from new witness Roy Rosselló, a member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo that was managed by José and his RCA Information. Rosselló got here ahead with the allegation within the April 2023 Peacock docuseries, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed. Gascón has beforehand shared a picture of the handwritten letter on his social media, however has since eliminated the put up.
“This is a trial that occurred twice. Originally, the jury couldn’t come to a decision, so it hung,” Gascón defined to Tapper. “Then in the second trial, there was a lot of evidence that was presented in the first trial that was not presented in the second trial, and they were found guilty. There’s no question that they murdered their parents.”
So Gascón mentioned what’s beneath overview is the proof that was by no means offered that would have modified the end result, in addition to contemplating, beneath California legislation, if the brothers are rehabilitated prisoners who’re secure to reenter the group.
“Either one of those vehicles has to be evaluated by a court and approved by a court, and I’m looking at both,” he mentioned, including that he thinks “implicit bias” round male rape additionally performed a job on the time of the trials and “may have had an impact in the way the case was presented to the jury.”
Final week, Erik and Lyle’s prolonged household held a press convention calling for Gascón’s assist to reexamine the case. The brothers’ legal professional, Mark Geragos, pointed to Murphy’s nine-part collection for rallying the general public behind the brothers. “When the Ryan Murphy series came out, it was such a caricature of them that the pendulum swing — the backlash — created a focus on it,” he mentioned.
This story initially posted Oct. 23 at 7:52 a.m.
