After more than three decades behind bars, the Menendez brothers are a step closer to being free.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic reduced Erik and Lyle Menendez’s sentences from life without parole to 50 years to life. The Tuesday ruling makes the pair, who have been detained since March 1990 and were originally sentenced in July 1996 at ages 25 and 28 respectively, eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law.
“I’m not saying they should be released, it’s not for me to decide,” Jesic said. “I do believe they’ve done enough in the past 35 years that they should get that chance.”
It was a case that divided the public: At 18 and 21, in August 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez walked into their Beverly Hills home and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents, José and Kitty Menendez. Their trials were widely publicized, with defense attorneys arguing that the brothers had acted out of self-defense, fearing their father would kill them for exposing his alleged sexual abuse against them, while prosecutors argued that the brothers killed their parents to inherit a $14 million estate. Ultimately, they were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
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But the case regained publicity and continues to divide the public after it was dramatized in the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story last year, which was followed by the documentary The Menendez Brothers.
In recent years, more evidence has surfaced to support the brothers’ allegations against their father. In 2018, journalist Robert Rand, who covered the brothers’ story extensively and visited them multiple times in prison, uncovered a letter written by 17-year-old Erik Menendez to the brothers’ cousin Andy Cano a year before the murders. The letter detailed the ongoing abuse of Erik by his father. Cano, who died in 2003, testified about his knowledge of the abuse but the letter was not used as evidence in the trials.
“I looked at it and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this could be really important to the case,’” Rand told The Hollywood Reporter in August last year.
A former member of the Latin boy band Menudo also alleged that José Menendez, who was a music executive at RCA Records, had abused him. Roy Rosselló said in the 2023 Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed that José had drugged and raped him when he was 14 years old. In May 2023, after the series’ release, the brothers’ attorneys submitted a writ of habeas corpus arguing that “the new evidence not only shows that José Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that—in fact—he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988. Just as the defense had argued all along.”
The habeas corpus petition has stalled since then, but current Los Angeles County district attorney Nathan Hochman said in February that he was opposed to a new trial. The brothers also submitted a clemency petition to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which will be heard by the parole board in June.
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Last fall then-Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón asked the court to resentence the brothers, and the court separately initiated a resentencing petition. Last month, Hochman’s office requested that Gascon’s motion be withdrawn, which was rejected by Judge Jesic. Hochman and his team have argued that, by never renouncing their claim of “imperfect self-defense,” the brothers have failed to demonstrate full remorse or accountability for their crimes.
At the resentencing hearing on Tuesday, the brothers appeared via a video livestream. Addressing the court before the judge’s decision, they apologized for the murders and said they hoped to work with sex abuse victims if they were to be released.
“I had to stop being selfish and immature to really understand what my parents went through in those last moments,” Erik, now 54, said, recalling the “shock, confusion and betrayal” they must have felt. Addressing his family, he said: “You did not deserve what I did to you, but you inspire me to do better.”
Lyle, now 57, also apologized to his family: “I lied to you and forced you into a spotlight of public humiliation,” he said. “I killed my mom and dad. I make no excuses and also no justification. … Today, 35 years later, I am deeply ashamed of who I was.”
Some family members have called for the brothers’ release, including launching a coalition “Justice for Erik and Lyle” in October last year. Earlier this year, two dozen family members signed onto a letter to the court asking for the brothers to be resentenced. Others in the family, however, like Kitty’s brother Milton Andersen, opposed the brothers’ release up until his death in March this year.
Read More: Why the Family of the Menendez Brothers Are Calling for Their Release
“We all, on both sides of the family, believe that 35 years is enough,” Anamaria Baralt, one of the brothers’ three cousins, said at the resentencing hearing, asking the judge for their immediate release. “They are universally forgiven by our family.”
Baralt said the family has endured a series of traumas, including “a relentless examination of our family in the public eye.”
The resentencing hearing focused on the brothers’ rehabilitation.
The judge gave the brothers “a lot of credit for changing their lives,” pointing to a letter submitted by a prison official in support of the resentencing—which the official had never done in 25 years.
The brothers’ defense attorney, Mark Geragos, who had asked that his clients’ charges be reduced to manslaughter, which would have meant their immediate release, told reporters after the hearing that Judge Jesic “did what justice said should happen.”
“We have evolved, this is not the ’90s anymore,” Geragos said.
Because the brothers committed their crime under the age of 26, they are now immediately eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law. They must demonstrate to the state parole board that they have been rehabilitated in prison at a parole hearing.
While incarcerated, the brothers have gotten an education, worked on prison reform, painted a mural, gotten married, and started several support groups for other inmates, including those who experienced childhood sexual abuse. One former inmate, Anerae Brown, called the programs “Menendez University” in his testimony at the hearing.
“They are very different men from the boys they were,” Baralt said at the hearing. She told reporters that the parole hearing next will be a “difficult process” but said the family will “eagerly step through those doors if that means getting them home.”
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