California judge rejects Menendez brothers’ request for new trial | California

A California judge rejected a request for a new trial for Erik and Lyle Menendez, saying that the allegations that the brothers had been sexually abused had not replaced their “premeditation and deliberation” when they killed their parents over 35 years ago.

The decision of Monday by the judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, William C Ryan, comes just a few weeks after the brothers refused by the parole and closed another possible path towards freedom for the two who served almost 30 years in prison. Ryan denied a request in May 2023 to examine their convictions based on new evidence supporting their allegations of sexual abuse by their father.

Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced in 1996 to life prison for having fatally killed their father, José Menendez, and his mother, Kitty Menendez, in their manor of Beverly Hills in 1989. They were 18 and 21 years old at the time. While the defense lawyers argued that the brothers had acted by self -defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, the prosecutors said that the brothers had killed their parents for a heritage of several million dollars.

The parole hearings in August – to come after a judge reduced his sorrows in May – marked the two to gain freedom since their conviction almost 30 years ago for having murdered their parents.

The judge wrote that the new evidence that “slightly corroborates” the allegations according to which the brothers had been sexually abused does not deny the fact that the pair acted in “premeditation and deliberation” when they carried out the murders.

“The alleged evidence here is not so convincing that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or support for an imperfect self -defense instruction,” wrote the judge.

Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the brothers, would not immediately comment on the judge’s decision.

A panel of two commissioners of August 22 refused Lyle Menendez the parole for three years after a day hearing. The commissioners noted that the older brother always presented “anti -social personality traits such as deception, minimization and reduction of rules below this positive surface”.

Erik Menendez, who is detained in the same prison in San Diego, was denied parole one day earlier after the commissioners determined that his bad behavior in prison always gave him a risk to public security.

During his hearing, Erik Menendez offered his most detailed account during the years of the way he was raised and why he made the choices he made – both at the time of the murders of his parents and during his decades in prison.

“I was not raised with a moral foundation,” he said. “I was raised to lie, cheat, steal in the sense, an abstract way.”

In the past year, the support of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and greater recognition of the brothers as victims of sexual abuse helped to raise a legion of supporters who called for their release. Some flew to Los Angeles in recent months, organizing gatherings and assistant to the court hearings while the brothers’ lawyers have pushed their resentment.

The former District Prosecutor of County, George Gascón, first opened the door to possible freedom for the brothers last fall by asking a judge to reduce their sorrows. Since their conviction, the brothers have obtained an education, have participated in self-assistance lessons and have started various support groups for colleagues in prison, said his office in a petition.

The judge’s decision finally reviewed the brothers followed months of decline in current prosecutors.

Associated Press contributed the reports