Menendez Brothers Home For The Holidays? L.A. DA Backs Clemency Request By Siblings To Governor
Thanks to the recent direct intervention of the Los Angeles County District Attorney, Erik Menendez and Lyle Menendez are already looking at a possible resentencing and the option of parole after nearly 30 years behind bars for the 1989 murder of their parents.
Now, incumbent George Gascón is asking California Gov. Gavin Newsom to step in and get the siblings out of state prison ASAP.
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“I write in strong support of Lyle Menendez’s petition for clemency submitted to your office on October 28, 2024,” wrote the incumbent DA in a short letter Wednesday to the governor as a follow-up to a request from the brothers’ attorneys. “Mr. Menendez is currently 56 years old serving his 34th year in prison at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility,” Gascón added. In a separate letter sent today, the DA said: “I write in strong support of Erik Menendez’s petition for clemency submitted to your office on October 28, 2024. Mr. Menendez is currently 54 years old serving his 34th year in prison at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility.”
READ THE D.A.’S CLEMENCY LETTER FOR LYLE MENENDEZ HERE.
The brothers “have respectively served 34 years and have continued their educations and worked to create new programs to support the rehabilitation of fellow inmates,” Gascón noted in a follow-up statement Wednesday.
Under the Golden State’s constitution, a governor has near unlimited power to grant clemency, which includes commutations of sentence and pardons. Before the letters from Gascón were sent, Gov. Newsom offered a nuanced opinion on the case on October 26 when asked about it. “What matters is justice and fairness,” the term-limited governor said, noting the success of Ryan Murphy’s nine-part Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in bringing the case back to the headlines. “Not treating them any worse because they’re celebrities, not treating them certainly any better because they’re celebrities.”
To that, the governor’s office did not respond to a request today from Deadline about the letters from the D.A. or next steps Newsom may take in the once-again high-profile matter. If we do hear from the governor’s office on this case, this post will be updated.
READ THE D.A.’S CLEMENCY LETTER FOR ERIK MENENDEZ HERE.
This latest unconventional move by Gascón comes as a new judge was named in the Menendez brothers’ case. Soon after taking over the case, L.A. Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic set a December 11 hearing to consider the resentencing of the siblings publicly recommended last week by the DA’s self-declared divided office. Additionally, there is a November 25 hearing coming up on a defense petition for reconsideration from defense attorney Mark Geragos that the duo be resentenced on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
If successful, such a resentencing would likely see the brothers out of the San Diego facility they are both incarcerated in within days.
The brothers were given life in prison without parole in their second trial in 1996 for the late 1980s brutal shotgun killing of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. The brothers claimed that they suffered from sexual abuse at the hands of their music executive father. While admitted in their first trial, which ended in a mistrial, that evidence was essentially banned from the second trial.
Having exhausted their appeal options, the case received renewed attention from new evidence of the sexual abuse from Jose Menendez to the boys and others revealed in a Peacock documentary last year, Beyond a swarm of TikTok videos, there was Murphy’s September 19 launching Monsters, a new Netflix documentary on the brothers and the advocacy of Kim Kardashian and most of the extended Menendez family reviving attention to the case.
In there might lay the real rub here for the Menendez brothers and for George Gascón.
This now expedited process with requests to Gov. Newsom from the defense team and the DA’s office all comes as Gascón faces a likely defeat in his reelection bid next week. Far behind ex-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman in his bid for a second term and mocked by his rival for the “suspicious” timing of the DA’s sudden interest in the Menendez brothers’ case, there is a very good chance that Gascón will be out of office by the time of the December 11 hearing.
Sources close to the Ted Sarandos-backed Hochman confirm the former George W. Bush DOJer is going to look over the Menendez case quite closely if elected. There is no sense he will put the brakes on the matter, but there is also no indication Hochman will go as fast and furious as Gascón on the case or the sentencing.
All of which means, despite all the chatter and flurry of activity, the Menendez brothers’ hope for freedom may become a matter of hurry up, and wait.
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