Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has announced that he is recommending that the Menendez brothers, who murdered their parents with shotguns in 1989, be resentenced. This will begin a judicial process that gives them a new chance at freedom.
Today, at a press conference in LA, the DA said that after careful review he believes Erik and Lyle should be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said. He added that people who have survived sexual assault are often done great injustice, and introduced members of Erik and Lyle’s extended family, who were in attendance.
He made clear that he was not excusing murder: “Even if you get abused, the right path is to call police or get help,” he said. But he said he took into account the age of the brothers at the time of the murders, and the fact that, even without the hope of parole, they have been on “the journey of rehabilitation and redemption.” Gascón that some in the DA’s office still believe the brothers should spend the rest of their life in prison, and may appear in court to argue against resentencing.
If Judge William C. Ryan, who is presiding over the case, agrees with the DA’s recommendation, he would hold a new sentencing hearing. The brothers have now been behind bars for over three decades without the possibility of parole.
Gascón is up for reelection on November 5 against Nathan Hochman, who leads him in the polls. Hochman has called the timing of Gascón’s interest in the case “incredibly suspicious.” But Michael Romano, the director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, which works to release people serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes, says he doubts that politics have affected the DA’s decision. “I know George pretty well,” he says. “I absolutely think that he [made this announcement] because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. I mean, regardless of the new evidence, sentencing 19- and 21-year-olds to life without parole is very, very harsh and something that Gascón probably opposes across the board.”
If Hochman wins the election, as expected, it’s unknown what his position would be, but he is running on a tough-on-crime platform, and his website criticizes Gascón for “the ‘abandonment’ of victims in favor of lenient policies toward offenders.”
“The very likely outcome is that Hochman, assuming that he wins, comes in and probably argues for the middle ground sentence of life with parole,” Romano says. “That’s a very safe position for everybody to take because it kicks the can down the road. Parole hearing is less public than court. And it’s not what the brothers want.”
The brothers’ extended family has a right to attend a resentencing hearing under Marsy’s Law. That group could include Kitty Menendez’s older brother, Milton Andersen, who does not support their release. “Mr. Andersen firmly believes that his nephews were not molested,” his attorney, Kathy Cady, said in a statement last week. “He believes that is a fabrication and he believes that the motive was pure greed.”
