Menendez Brothers Case: Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón Will Begin the Case This Week

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he plans to decide by the end of the week his position on a possible resentencing for the Menendez brothers.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were sentenced to life in prison for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. But the brothers’ defense team has been pushing for the past year to have their sentences reviewed based on what they say is new evidence supporting the brothers. » claims sexual and physical abuse by parents.

Gascón said he initially intended to formulate a position on the defense’s arguments in time for the November hearing. But with renewed public attention on the case sparked by a new Netflix documentary released this month, he’s accelerating the timeline.

Menendez case will be reconsidered

He told CNN on Tuesday that prosecutors in his office were deeply divided over the defense’s appeal.

“I have a group of people, including some who were involved in the original trial, who are adamant that they should spend the rest of their lives in prison and that they were not molested,” Gascón said.
“I have other people in my office who actually say they were probably molested and they deserve some relief.”

He said there was no doubt that the two brothers killed their parents. The only question is whether they deserve some reduction in their sentences after three decades.

In addition to claiming new evidence of abuse, the defense team also argues that the brothers deserve some relief because of the decades they have already spent in prison and the rehabilitation they have undergone.

“I plan to make a decision by the end of this week, which is what I promised when we started receiving a lot of requests. By the way, we have been considering this case for over a year.”

How the resentencing process might work in the Menendez case