Key takeaways from the parole hearings of Erik and Lyle Menendez | California
This week’s conditional liberation hearings were the last turn of the Lyle saga and Erik Menendez, who have been behind bars since their arrest in 1990 for having killed their parents with hunting rifles.
During their television trial, which was a media feeling of the 1990s, the brothers said that murders were an act of self -defense after years of their father’s sexual abuse.
A panel of California commissioners rejected the parole of Erik Menendez on Thursday. Friday, Lyle Menendez was also denied parole. Here are four key points to remember audiences this week.
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1 and 1 The Menendez family supports their offer of freedom
More than a dozen parents of the two brothers testified in favor of their release during parole hearings, and they reacted angrily to the decision to keep them behind bars for at least three years more. “How is my father a threat to society !!!!!” Erik’s daughter-in-law, Talia Menendez, wrote on Instagram. “It has been decades of torture for our family. How long ???”
Erik’s wife Tammi Menendez accused the commissioner president of the panel of two people, Robert Barton, from bias in a post on X. During the hearing, Barton told Erik Menendez: “Unlike your convictions from your supporters, you were not a model prisoner model”, and cited his possession of a smuggling phone.
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2 Netflix and Tiktok have generated a new sympathy for the brothers
Support for the brothers has grown since a generation of young Americans was presented in the case by the release of the Netflix Monsters series, in which Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny played their parents, and a Netflix documentary, featuring telephone interviews with Lyle and Erik. The attention of new media has propelled support to brothers on social networks, including Tiktok and Instagram.
Despite this, the fictitious dramatic series, which suggested without evidence that the brothers had an incestuous relationship, was denounced by family members as a “grotesque shockadrama”. In a press release, the family called monsters “a nightmare of the episode in a phobic, raw, anachronistic and series series which is not only riddled with pure and simple errors and lies but which ignores the most recent excifgeory revelations”. Erik Menendez also described the series as “dishonest representation” and criticized what he called “horrible and flagrant lies” in the series.
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3 and 3 The brothers pleaded for a new trial based on new evidence of sexual abuse
The lawyers of the brothers filed a request to a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2023 in which they argued that two evidence discovered after their trials supported their statements according to which they had been sexually abused by their father. If the judge agrees, the brothers may be granted a new trial or reduced penalties.
The first proof is a letter, discovered by a journalist, in which Erik described years of sexual abuse by his father to a cousin at the age of 17. The second element of evidence is the testimony of a former member of the Boyband Menodo who declared in a documentary in 2023 that the father of the Menendez brothers had sexually assaulted him when he was a teenager.
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4 The new DA of the County of Los Angeles opposes the release of the brothers
The movement to release the Menendez brothers underwent a setback last November, when George Gascón, the progressive prosecutor who had supported a reduction in their sorrows – from life to prison without the possibility of parole – lost his candidacy for the re -election of the word of the County of Los Angeles to Nathan Hochman, a republican who opposed the word.
On the eve of last year’s elections, Gascón said in a statement that the understanding of the company of the impact of sexual abuses had evolved. “Since the original proceedings of the Menendez brothers more than three decades ago, our office has acquired a more in -depth understanding of the complexities surrounding sexual violence. We recognize that it is a general problem that has an impact on individuals of all gender identities, and we remain firmly in our commitment to support all the victims they sail in the long -term effects of such trauma, “wrote Gascón.
Less than two weeks later, Gascón lost to Hochman by nearly 20 points.
Hochman said in a statement on Thursday that the decision to refuse parole to Erik Menendez “does justice to Jose and Kitty Menendez, the victims of the brutal murders led by their sons on August 20, 1989”.
“The request for the previous administration in matters of reinforcement did not examine or examined if the Menendez brothers showed a complete overview and took the total responsibility for their crimes,” added Hochman, in reference to Gascón’s measures to make parole.
