Erik and Lyle Menendez received a chance at freedom Tuesday after more than 35 years in prison, with an L.A. County judge granting a request to resentence them after hours of emotional testimony from family members who said the brothers had spent enough time behind bars for the brutal 1989 killings of their parents.
Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic said late Tuesday that he would resentence the brothers to 50 years to life, meaning they will be granted a parole hearing at some point in the future.
“We are deeply humble and grateful and happy for our family,” Lyle Menendez said in a phone call with one of his attorneys outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, which was relayed to a Times reporter.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman argued that the brothers had failed to show proper “insight” into their crimes and had not atoned for lies they told over the last 30 years about the nature of the killings, but Jesic dismissed those arguments as irrelevant. Prosecutors needed to prove the brothers posed an unreasonable risk to the public, according to Jesic, who said they failed to do so.
After deciding they should be resentenced, Jesic allowed each brother to speak to the court over a Zoom call from prison. In tearful addresses that drew sobs from the relatives who have been fighting for their release for years, Erik and Lyle said they took full responsibility for their crimes.
Erik called the murders “an atrocious act of brutality against two people who had every right to live.”
“I have no excuse, no justification, for what I did,” he said.
“I take full responsibility for all my choices … the choice to point a gun at my mom and dad … the choice to reload … the choice to run and to hide and to do anything I could to get away,” a tearful Lyle said moments earlier.
Jesic’s decision ended an eight-month saga that started when then-Dist. Atty. George Gascón filed a petition for the brothers to be resentenced late last year, and followed an emotional day of testimony.
Anamaria Baralt, often wiping away tears, testified Tuesday that the relatives of victims Jose and Kitty Menendez wanted a judge to give her two cousins a lesser sentence than life without parole for the 1989 murders inside their Beverly Hills mansion.
“We all on both sides of the family say 35 years is enough,” she said in the courtroom. “They are universally forgiven by both sides of their families.”
The hearing was the culmination of years of advocacy by the family to free the brothers, who were convicted of first-degree murder.
Defense attorney Mark Geragos asked Jesic to resentence the brothers to manslaughter, arguing they shot their parents to death out of fear their father might kill them to cover up years of sexual abuse. But instead, Jesic’s ruling aligned with a request made last year by Gascón. The reduced sentence of 50 years to life makes them eligible for parole under the state’s youthful offender law because they were under the age of 26 at the time of the murders.
“I want to give a hat tip to Judge Jesic who was able to cancel out all the noise surrounding this, all of the grandstanding, all of the political back and forth, and he did what the code section said,” Geragos said late Tuesday. “He did what justice said should happen.”
A parole hearing will likely be scheduled in the coming months. But Gov. Gavin Newsom could also grant them clemency if he honors a pending request. A hearing on that matter is currently scheduled for June 13.
California’s resentencing law leans heavily in favor of defendants, a point Jesic reminded the courtroom of early Tuesday. Under state law, Jesic said, he could block a resentencing petition only if the defendant poses an “unreasonable risk of danger to public safety,” meaning there is a risk they will commit another violent crime — such as murder, manslaughter or rape — if they are released.
Hochman this year announced his opposition to the brothers’ release. He alleged that the brothers continue to lie about the motive behind the murders, dismissing the idea that they genuinely feared Jose would kill them to cover up his alleged sexual abuse.
“The Menendez brothers have never come fully clean for all the lies, the cover-up, the deceit, that they have engaged in for more than 30 years,” Hochman said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning during a brief news conference.
He did not stay for the hearing and his office did not offer an immediate response to Jesic’s ruling.
The district attorney’s office did not put forth any witnesses Tuesday. In a closing argument that was repeatedly interrupted by Jesic, who kept noting prosecutors were applying the wrong legal standard, Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian questioned whether the court could really believe the brothers would not re-offend.
“Resentencing is about one important word: trust,” Balian said. “The Menendez brothers are asking you, trust us. Trust that we won’t commit more crimes. … We have to ask ourselves, are they trustworthy?”
Balian also spoke about the gruesome nature of the crime scene, noting how forensic evidence showed some of the shotgun blasts were fired at point-blank range to highlight the viciousness of the crime.
Baralt, whose mother was Jose Menendez’s older sister, said in court that the family had endured decades of pain from the scrutiny of the murders.
“From the day it happened … it has been a relentless examination of our family in the public eye,” she said, beginning to cry. “It has been torture for decades.”
She said the family was the butt of repeated jokes on “Saturday Night Live” and lived like outcasts who wore a “scarlet M.”
In the gruesome 1989 murders, the brothers bought shotguns with cash and opened fire as their mother and father watched a movie. Jose Menendez was shot five times, including in the kneecaps and the back of the head. Kitty Menendez crawled on the floor, wounded, before one of the brothers reloaded and fired a fatal blast, jurors heard at their two trials.
On the stand Tuesday, Baralt echoed the brothers’ justification for killing their parents, saying it was related to sexual abuse they endured. But Baralt also told the judge that she believes they have changed and are “very aware of the consequences of their actions.”
“I don’t think they are the same people they were 30 years ago,” she said.
Diane Hernandez, another cousin, told the courtroom about the “Hallway Rule” that governed where people could or could not be in Jose Menendez’s home. If the father was alone with Erik and Lyle in an upstairs room, no one else could be on that level, she said. Oftentimes, Hernandez said, Jose would then tell the rest of the family whichever brother he had just isolated “felt sick” and could not join the family for dinner. On cross-examination, she said she never witnessed either brother being abused.
Balian spent the morning trying to punch holes in the relatively clean reputations the brothers have earned behind bars. Both brothers had repeatedly received “low” risk scores from state corrections officials until the recent report that Hochman invoked, which raised their risk level to “moderate.”
Under cross-examination, Baralt acknowledged that she never thought her cousins were capable of killing their parents until they’d done it. She also said that before their criminal trial decades ago, Lyle Menendez had asked a witness to lie for him on the stand.
Nearly two dozen of the brothers’ relatives, including several who testified Tuesday, formed the Justice for Erik and Lyle Coalition to advocate for their release as interest in the case reignited in recent years. The release of a popular Netflix documentary on the murders, which included the unearthing of additional documentation of the alleged sexual abuse, helped fuel a motion for a new trial.
The family has become increasingly public in its fight after Hochman opposed his predecessor’s recommendation to resentence them. The relatives have repeatedly accused Hochman of bias against the brothers, called for him to be disqualified from the case and alleged he intimidated and bullied them during a private meeting. Hochman has denied all accusations of bias and wrongdoing, and says he simply disagrees with their position.
Kitty Menendez’s brother Milton was the only member of the family opposed to Erik and Lyle’s release, but he died this year. Kathy Cady, who served as his victims’ rights attorney, is now the head of Hochman’s Bureau of Victim Services, another point of aggravation for the relatives fighting for the brothers’ release.
Tamara Goodell — a Menendez cousin who previously filed a formal complaint against Hochman — testified Tuesday she had no reservations about freeing the two men who killed her great-aunt, noting Erik and Lyle had repeatedly apologized to her and the family.
The three have been writing letters back and forth since 2000, according to Goodell, who described rehabilitative programs the brothers have launched for other inmates and said continuing to imprison them would only “prevent the good” they can do in this world.
She saved her ire for Hochman, describing a January meeting at which she said the district attorney was hostile and defensive while she questioned him about Cady’s hiring.
“You’re a victim in this case, aren’t you?” Geragos asked her.
“I’m glad you see it that way,” Goodell responded, while staring daggers at the prosecution table.
