LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón told NBC News on Wednesday he hopes to make a decision within 10 days about whether to recommend resentencing for the Menendez brothers — and that, if he does, it’s possible they could be out of prison by the end of the year.
“It will be up to the court to decide which way they want to go, but it’s possible they could be,” Gascón said in an interview at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice shortly after a news conference by Menendez family members, who are calling for the brothers' release.
“If in fact they have rehabilitated as we are being told, which is what we’re reviewing, then I don’t believe they should spend the rest of their life in prison,” he added.
Erik and Lyle Menendez are serving life sentences without parole for the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home.
More than a dozen relatives of the brothers argue that not only have they served their time behind bars but that the original case did not properly weigh their allegations that their father sexually and physically abused them.
“If Lyle and Erik’s case were heard today, with the understanding we now have about abuse and PTSD, there is no doubt in my mind that their sentencing would have been very different,” Anamaria Baralt, José Menendez’s niece, told reporters Wednesday.
Gascón said that while he is still reviewing evidence, based on what he has seen so far, he agrees with those family members and also believes the brothers’ claims that they were molested.
“I think that there is a certain level of evidence that points out that there were a lot of problems in the household,” he said.
The brothers were first tried together in 1993, but the jury deadlocked. Prosecutors retried them in 1995, when a judge deemed most of the sexual abuse claims inadmissible, with prosecutors convincing jurors that they killed their parents to inherit money and went on a spending spree after the murders.
But last year, the brothers presented what they said was new evidence backing their allegations of sexual abuse, including a letter that one of the brothers is alleged to have sent to a cousin months before the murders about his father. In it, he wrote, “I’ve been trying to avoid dad ... every night, I stay up thinking he might come in.”
Roy Rossello, a former member of the band Menudo, also spoke out in the Peacock documentary series “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” alleging he was also raped by José Menendez. Peacock is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.
Not all the family believes the brothers.
Kathy Cady, who is representing Milton Andersen, Kitty Menendez's, said in an interview that her client does not believe his nephews were molested and that they were motivated by greed.
“Even should those allegations have been true, it doesn’t excuse what they did to their parents, and it doesn’t excuse the murders that they committed,” Cady said. “And again, the timing that they only committed the murders when they learned that they were going to be taken out of the will would seem to suggest otherwise.”
Gascón, who polls show is trailing in his bid to be re-elected, recently began speaking publicly about his office’s role in the case as it reviews the new evidence.
The case has been getting renewed attention after the release of the popular Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” which dramatizes their story.
Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in criminal cases, said that despite considerable public interest in the case, their release is by no means assured.
“The court of public opinion can provide some moral support for the defendants, but it’s in the judicial court where the decision will be made,” Levenson said. “Nobody should confuse this with significant legal issues that have to be resolved when this goes to court.”
Gascón acknowledged prosecutors in the DA’s office differ about whether the brothers should be resentenced and ultimately released.
He said that over the next 10 days he plans to talk to the prosecutors handling the case and review prison files on the brothers to corroborate the family’s claims that they have been rehabilitated.
“I’m looking to make sure that there was no misbehavior while they were in prison. I want to see what steps they have taken in order to become a better person,” he said.
Although Gascón said he is still contemplating whether to recommend resentencing, his public comments increasingly suggest he is open to it.
“We’re still in the review process,” he said. “But if, in fact, after 35 years of good behavior they’re ready to be reintegrated in society, then I think that that would be appropriate.”
