The public and legal drive to free Erik and Lyle Menendez, the notorious Los Angeles brothers who murdered their parents Jose and Mary “Kitty” Menendez in 1989, has taken a new political turn as they await a resentencing hearing a month into the new year.
An attorney – representing 24 family members of Kitty and Jose Menendez who support the brothers’ release – plans to file a petition to transfer the case from Los Angeles county to the California attorney general’s office, citing a conflict of interest.
The planned petition comes as Los Angeles county is about to see a change in prosecutor. Elections in November saw the defeat of the progressive district attorney George Gascón, who previously said he was open to the brothers’ resentencing.
Lyle and Erik Menendez have been in prison 35 years for the crime with no possibility of parole. They have consistently claimed they killed their parents out of fear for their lives following years of sexual abuse.
Gascón said his office was evaluating whether the brothers should remain in prison for the rest of their lives and that he had a “moral and ethical obligation to review what is being presented”.
An extraordinary push for the Menendez brothers to be freed bubbled up in the wake of a sympathetic Netflix documentary and new claims that Jose Menendez, a former RCA Records executive, had also allegedly abused Roy Rosselló, a former member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boyband Menudo. There was also the recent discovery of a letter from Erik Menendez to a cousin that was penned before the murders in which he discussed his father’s abuse.
The incoming Los Angeles district attorney, Nathan Hochman, is an independent and may be less sympathetic to the Menendez brothers’ resentencing drive. Hochman has said that he plans to review all the evidence in the brothers’ case.
Bryan Freedman, the lawyer representing the 24 relatives who support the brothers’ release, has accused Hochman of “playing politics” with the case.
Freedman told Good Morning America that Hochman should meet with the family members.
“The family members are victims. They suffered loss. They have also seen the rehabilitation. They are the best people to talk to,” Freedman said.
The Menendez brothers have long claimed that they acted in self-defense when they fatally shot their parents as they watched TV in August 1989. But prosecutors claimed the crimes were committed for money after the brothers went on a $700,000 spending spree in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths.
The first trial, which had separate juries for each brother, ended in a mistrial. A second trial in 1996, which took place soon after OJ Simpson’s acquittal for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, found the brothers guilty. They were sentenced to two consecutive terms of life without parole.
However, some of the evidence that the brothers may have been abused by their father was excluded from that trial, which is the groundwork for the resentencing push. Hochman recently told Deadline: “Erik Menendez was able to testify in great detail about all the sexual abuse he experienced. He was even able to testify about sexual abuse that Lyle experienced.”
But Freedman, the family lawyer, rejected that claim, saying that “[there was] a number of witnesses, a number of family members, who weren’t able to testify about the abuse that they saw”.
Hochman’s office has rejected conflict of interest that might justify moving the resentencing case from county prosecutors to state prosecutors as “meritless”.
“All Menendez victim family members who want the opportunity to personally speak with the district attorney before any final decisions are made have been invited to do so and these discussions should be completed in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson for the district attorney told Fox News Digital.
