A resentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Mendendez, the brothers convicted of murdering their parents in their Beverly Hills home more than 30 years ago, has been pushed back until January, in part to allow Los Angeles’s newly-elected district attorney to weigh in on the case.
The brothers, who were found guilty of first-degree murder in the killings of José and Kitty Menendez in 1989 and sentenced to life in prison without parole, were due to appear before a judge for the first time in decades, but technical problems prevented them from appearing virtually from a San Diego prison.
Defense attorneys said the brothers feared their parents were going to kill them to cover up years of sexual, psychological and physical abuse they had suffered. They have repeatedly appealed their convictions without success. The prosecutors who successfully argued for a life sentence had portrayed the brothers as greedy young men eager for their multimillion-dollar inheritance.
Now, at 53 and 56, the brothers are making a new bid for freedom. Their lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition – a request for a court to examine whether someone is being lawfully detained – in May 2023, asking a judge to consider new evidence of their father’s sexual abuse. “Newly discovered evidence directly supports the defense presented at trial,” the petition said.
Superior court judge Michael Jesic said during a much-anticipated hearing on Monday that he needed more time to review the new evidence, and to give Los Angeles county’s newly elected district attorney, Nathan Hochman, who is more politically conservative than the current district attorney, time to weigh in on the case.
Jesic said he will consider the resentencing request on 30 January instead of 11 December as originally planned, prompting news headlines from Hollywood outlets closely following the case that the Menendez Brothers Won’t Be Free By Christmas.
Jesic said he had 17 boxes of documents to review, which includes abuse evidence raised in the habeas petition.
Hochman, the incoming district attorney, who takes office in December, said in a statement to media in November that he looked forward to putting in the “hard work to thoroughly review the facts and law of the Menendez case”.
Two of the brothers’ aunts, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, and Teresita Baralt, Jose’s older sister, did testify at the Los Angeles hearing on Monday and asked for their release, saying 35 years was a long time for the brothers after suffering abuse.
“We miss those who are gone tremendously,” Baralt said in tears after taking the stand. “But we miss the kids too.”
Last month, Los Angeles prosecutors recommended resentencing for the brothers, saying they had worked on redemption and rehabilitation and demonstrated good behavior inside prison.
There is no question the brothers committed the killing, George Gascón, the current district attorney, told CNN. “The question is to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to, given the totality of the circumstance.”
Gascón asked for new sentences of 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole because they were less than 26 years old when they killed their parents.
The developments come as a a more sympathetic view of the brothers emerged in recent years, due in part to viral TikTok videos that focused on their story of abuse. Numerous documentaries and TV shows, including the Netflix drama Monsters: Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and the documentary The Menendez Brothers, intensified public interest and pressure on district attorneys.
Among those asking to review the case was Kim Kardashian, who penned an essay calling for the brothers’ release, pointing to the allegations of abuse and the brothers’ behavior in prison. The brothers have earned college degrees, served as mentors and provided hospice care to elderly people in prison.
“I have spent time with Lyle and Erik; they are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, and honest men,” Kardashian wrote.
The new evidence includes a letter Erik Menendez wrote in 1988 to his uncle Andy Cano, describing the sexual abuse he had endured from his father. The brothers asked their lawyers about it after it was mentioned in a 2015 Barbara Walters television special. The lawyers had not known of the letter and realized it had not been introduced at their trials, making it in effect new evidence that they say corroborates allegations that Erik was sexually abused by his father.
More new evidence emerged when Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, recently came forward to allege he had been drugged and raped by José Menendez, the boys’ father, when he was a teen in the 1980s. Menudo were signed under RCA Records, where José Menendez was chief operating officer.
Rosselló spoke about the alleged abuse in the Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, and provided a signed declaration to the brothers’ lawyers.
Had these two pieces of evidence been available during the brothers’ trial, prosecutors would not have been able to argue that there was no corroboration of sexual abuse, or that José Menendez was not the “kind of man that would” abuse children, the petition argues.
While clemency might be another pathway to freedom for the brothers, last week Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said he would not decide until Hochman, who unseated Gascón in the 5 November election, reviews the case.
Gascón has said his office was deeply divided on the case, with some prosecutors arguing the brothers should remain in prison and others advocating for their release.
Dani Anguiano and the Associated Press contributed reporting
