Menendez Brothers' Resentencing Hearing Is Set for Next Week
After resolving the latest round of legal hurdles, a Los Angeles judge has scheduled a hearing for next week to decide whether Lyle and Erik Menendez should be eligible for release after more than three of decades behind bars.
The long-awaited resentencing hearing, which had first been scheduled for December and then was repeatedly postponed will now take place over two days, on May 13 and 14, the judge, Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court, said on Friday.
Once again, family members of the brothers were arranging to travel to Los Angeles for the proceedings. Others, including people who were imprisoned with them and correctional officials who have overseen their incarceration, were planning to be there, too, to testify that the brothers have been rehabilitated and no longer represent a danger to the community.
The Menendez brothers have behind bars since the spring of 1990, when they were arrested and charged with killing their parents the previous summer. The brothers had burst in to the den of the family home in Beverly Hills, Calif., and killed their parents with shotgun blasts as the couple watched television and ate ice cream.
The crime, and the fact that it occurred in such a wealthy, exclusive community, captivated the country. And the case never fully ceded its grip on the nation's consciousness, maintained through numerous dramatic and documentary treatments.
At their trials, the brothers had maintained that they had been sexually abused for years by their father, Jose Menendez, and that their mother, Kitty Menendez, was complicit because she knew of the abuse and did nothing to stop it. They said they killed out of fear for their own lives, worried that their parents would kill them first to prevent disclosure of the family's secrets.
At their first trial, the brothers were tried together but with separate juries. The judge gave wide latitude to the defense to offer testimony and evidence about sexual abuse, and the trial was televised to a national audience. Each jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared.
In the years following their convictions, the brothers seemingly exhausted every legal avenue to have their cases reviewed. And then last fall, after two new shows appeared on Netflix — a dramatic series by the producer Ryan Murphy and a documentary — new legal possibilities emerged.
At the same time, social media campaigns on the brothers' behalf, organized by young people who believe the sexual abuse evidence should have been a mitigating factor at trial, put pressure on officials to reconsider the case.
Last fall, George Gascón, then the district attorney of Los Angeles, asked a court to resentence the brothers to 50 years to life with the possibility of parole. Because the brothers were younger than 25 at the time of the crime, the sentence sought by Mr. Gascón would have made them immediately eligible for parole.
Then, Mr. Gascón was defeated in November's election by Nathan Hochman, whose campaign urged a more punitive approach to prosecuting crime.
Mr. Hochman had a very different view of the Menendez brothers, and he has opposed resentencing them, saying they had failed to demonstrate 'full insight' into their crimes. Specifically, he said Lyle, now 57, and Erik, now 54, had never disavowed their contention that they had acted in self-defense, which Mr. Hochman has called a lie.
Mr. Hochman tried to withdraw Mr. Gascon's resentencing petition, but Judge Jesic rejected his request. On Friday, Mr. Hochman once again asked the court to allow his office to withdraw the petition based on new information from a recently completed report by the state's parole board about the brothers' time in prison. That report was put together on behalf of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is separately considering clemency for the brothers.
Speaking in court, Mr. Hochman said the report cited rules violations by the brothers, including their use of cellphones.
Judge Jesic, however, said the report, which remains under seal, did not include much new information, and he denied Mr. Hochman's motion to withdraw the petition.
Given Mr. Hochman's stance, the proceedings have become increasingly adversarial, and the brothers' lawyers briefly sought to have the district attorney's office recused from the case. But one of the brothers' lawyers, Mark Geragos, withdrew the request on Friday in the interest of moving the proceedings along, he said.
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