Judge Allows Menendez Brothers Resentencing Case To Advance

After more than 35 years in prison, Erik and Lyle Menendez will get a shot at freedom, after a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge decided to allow a resentencing hearing to move forward — over the objections of the county's new district attorney, Courthouse News reports. In a Friday hearing, attorneys for both sides accused each other of using the brothers' case as political fodder, but Judge Michael Jesic said that he didn't believe that either former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón or current District Attorney Nathan Hochman had acted politically. The judge concluded that he didn't find the district attorney's office's arguments contesting the brothers' self-defense claims persuasive. "There's no new information," Jesic said. "None of this shocked me." He added that he didn't believe that "just because something wasn't in the original petition, we should throw away everything." Jesic denied the district attorney office's motion to withdraw the resentencing petition and set up a hearing next week. on the merits of whether or not the brothers should be resentenced. The judge will have the authority to resentence the brothers to time served, which would see them released, or resentence them to life in prison with the possibility of parole, giving them a chance to plead their case before the parole board.

The Menendez brothers, who were convicted in 1996 of the 1989 murders of their parents, claim they'd been suffering from a lifetime of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, Jose, a record executive. During their two trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury, they said the killings were done in self-defense, out of fear that their parents were about to murder them. They were convicted during their second trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Federal and state appellate courts upheld the convictions. Gascón — known as a progressive criminal justice reformer — requested a resentencing hearing for the brothers in October, weeks before an election he was expected to lose. He was roundly defeated by Hochman, who pledged to roll back most of Gascón's policies, and to take another look at the Menendez case. In March, Hochman announced that he would with draw his predecessor's request. On Friday, Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian argued that Gascón had acted politically, in a desperate attempt to salvage his flailing political career. He said that Gascón's motion for a resentencing had been rushed and shoddily put together. Much of Balian's three-hour argument focused on why the brothers were undeserving of their freedom — they had failed to show proper remorse for their horrific crime and failed to "understand the severity and depravity of [their] conduct," he said. Balian argued the brothers' self-defense argument had been concocted out of thin air, and that they had persisted in the ruse to this day. "They have been hunkered down in their bunker of lies and deception," Balian said. "They're still the same people they were back then. They're still telling the same lies."