(NEW YORK) — Lyle and Erik Menendez have been behind bars for 35 years, and when both brothers were denied parole last week, their case reached another barricade.
But the brothers still have three potential paths to freedom:
Parole
The brothers were initially sentenced to life without parole for the 1989 shotgun killings of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, said they committed the murders in self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father.
This May, a judge resentenced them to 50 years to life in prison, making them immediately eligible for parole under youth offender parole laws. The judge said he was moved by the supportive letters from prison guards and was amazed by the work the brothers had accomplished to better the lives of their fellow inmates.
At their first parole hearings last week, both Lyle and Erik Menendez were denied release.
In separate hearings, commissioners stressed how the brothers repeatedly broke rules in prison, like illegal cellphone use.
“While cellphones may seem like something innocuous,” ABC News legal contributor Brian Buckmire said, the parole commissioners focused on “the criminality that allowed those cellphones to get into the prison,” like smuggling and bribes. “The money that was associated with trying to get those cellphones in oftentimes go to gangs within the prison,” Buckmire explained.
The brothers can apply for parole again in three years. With good behavior in prison, that wait can potentially be shortened to 18 months.
Clemency
A second possible path to release is clemency, which California Gov. Gavin Newsom can grant at any time.
“He can provide clemency in the form of commutation, further reducing the sentence of the brothers, making them eligible for release even today,” Buckmire said. “Or, a pardon, giving them a full forgiveness of the crime.”
“That has some political undertones,” Buckmire continued, “and no one knows just yet what information the governor will take from this parole hearing to use to either grant clemency or not.”
Bid for a new trial
The third path is the brothers’ habeas corpus petition, which they submitted in 2023 to try to get another trial based on new evidence not originally presented in court.
The petition presents two pieces of new evidence. One is allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo, who revealed in the 2023 docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” that he was raped by Jose Menendez. The second is a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse; the cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but the letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to the brothers’ attorney.
Defense attorneys argue that the “newfound information … would have resulted in a lesser penalty at trial,” Buckmire said.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who is firmly opposed to the brothers’ release, filed a response to the habeas corpus petition this month, stating that he “concluded that this petition does not come close to meeting the factual or legal standard to warrant a new trial.”
“The central defense of the Menendez brothers at trial has always been self-defense, not sexual abuse. The jury rejected this self-defense defense in finding them guilty of the horrific murders they perpetrated; five different appellate state and federal courts have affirmed those convictions, and nothing in the so-called ‘new’ evidence challenges any of those determinations,” Hochman said in a statement. “Our opposition to this ‘Hail Mary’ effort to obtain a new trial over 30 years later makes clear that justice, the facts, and the law demand the convictions stand.”
The petition is pending. The final decision will be made by a judge.
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