Menendez Brothers’ Fate To Be Decided By End Of Week, L.A. DA George Gascón Tells CNN
In the middle of a bleak reelection campaign, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is continuing to hope the Menendez brothers can shift his political fortunes.
Weeks after giving a press conference to say he was “reviewing” newish evidence regarding the sexual abuse the brothers allegedly suffered at the hands of their father, and amidst public pressure to show leniency to Erik and Lyle Menendez, Gascón told CNN on Tuesday that the case might be taking a dramatic turn in the next few days.
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“There’s actually two different camps in my office,” Gascón told CNN’s Jake Tapper this afternoon. “I have a group of people, including some that were involved in the original trial, that are adamant that they should spend the rest of their life in prison and that they were not molested. I have other people in the office that believe actually, that they probably were molested and that they deserve to have some relief.”
“I plan to have a decision by the end of this week,” Gascón said.
It has to be said, the DA was honest in admitting that “the public attention to this case” that came with the success of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and a series of documentaries on the brothers had certainly played a role in what he is clearly thinks could be a vote winner.
In an echo of what he told People magazine earlier this week, the first-term DA’s decision could see a recommendation to the courts for a resentencing of the siblings. If that occurs, a previously scheduled November 26 hearing may end in the brothers’ life sentence reduced, or even being freed.
After the DA election, the hearing next month has been set on the petition by brothers Erik, 55, and Lyle, 56, that they were the subject of sexual abuse by their music industry exec father, as was at least one member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rosselló. In a letter unearthed last year, Erik wrote in 1988 to one of his cousins months before the brothers fatally shot their parents detailing the extreme and repeated sexual abuse he was suffering at the hands of his father. In that context, the claims, which were whitewashed from the brothers’ second trial in 1996, the outcome of the hearing in late November and any self-declared “final” decision by Gascón could see the brothers quickly released or go through a new trial 35 years after the murders of their parents Jose and Kitty.
Down double digits in the polls against ex-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman, Gascón at his October 3 press conference on the case said his divided office believed they had “a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us and make a determination based on a resentencing side, whether they deserve to be resentenced, even though they were clearly the murderers.”
“The timing is incredibly suspicious,” the Ted Sarandos-backed Hochman said in an October 8 candidate’s debate to Gascón, regarding the incumbent’s sudden interest in the Menendez case. “You certainly would not have me hold a press conference to tell you I’m just thinking about it.”
Yet, that contempt hasn’t deterred the DA from doubling down on the matter.
As Deadline reported on October 16, Gascón told ABC News’ special IMPACT x Nightline: Menendez Brothers: Monsters or Victims? that “given the totality of the circumstances, I don’t think they deserve to be in prison until they die.”
That same day last week, Gascón’s office met with around two dozen members of the brothers’ family and their lawyers after the relatives gave a press conference of their own in front of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center – the very building where both the brothers’ two 1990s trials took place.
Today on CNN, Tapper gave media-savvy Gascón an invite “to come on the show Friday to explain to us whatever decision you make.” Wanna bet he takes Tapper up on that?
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