LOS ANGELES — The district lawyer for Los Angeles County mentioned Wednesday he desires the California governor to grant clemency for Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who’re serving life sentences for killing their mother and father in 1989.
District Attorney George Gascón’s introduced he helps clemency requests by the pair lower than per week after he really helpful that they be resentenced of their homicide case.
“I strongly help clemency for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who’re at the moment serving sentences of life with out chance of parole,” Gascón mentioned in an announcement. “They have respectively served 34 years and have continued their educations and labored to create new applications to help the rehabilitation of fellow inmates.”
Attorneys for the brothers submitted requests for clemency to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday.
Clemency would permit the brothers, whose preliminary televised trial was a nationwide media sensation, to be launched instantly, and it’s separate from the resentencing effort.
A spokesperson for Newsom’s workplace declined to remark about whether or not Newsom, a Democrat, is inclined to grant clemency.
“Pending clemency purposes are confidential and we’re not in a position to focus on particular person instances,” the spokesperson mentioned in an e-mail. There is not any set timeline for the clemency assessment.
The brothers killed their mother and father, leisure firm government José Menendez and Kitty Menendez, with shotguns of their Beverly Hills dwelling in 1989.
Defense attorneys for the brothers argued that their father sexually abused them. After two trials, they had been convicted of homicide and sentenced to life with out parole. At the second trial, a lot of the sexual abuse claims had been deemed inadmissible in court docket.
Gascón, a progressive district lawyer who was elected in 2020 and is up for re-election this yr, filed a movement final Thursday asking that the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life.
If granted, it may permit the brothers to be eligible for parole instantly, Gascón mentioned, as a result of they had been youthful than 26 after they dedicated the crimes. Lyle Menendez was 21 and Erik Menendez was 18 on the time of the killings.
A Superior Court choose will determine whether or not they need to be resentenced. A listening to is scheduled for Dec. 11 within the resentencing effort.
Attorneys for the brothers argued in clemency requests that they each had been sexually abused by their father starting at a younger age. Lyle Menendez was molested by his father till he was 8 years previous, and Erik Menendez was sexually abused from age 6 till the killings, their attorneys wrote.
Both have labored to rehabilitate themselves and each earned levels, and so they created applications to assist different inmates, their attorneys wrote within the letters. Those elements and their ages — Lyle Menendez is 56 and Erik Menendez is 53 — make every “an exemplary candidate for clemency,” the attorneys wrote.
The brothers shot their mother and father a number of occasions with Mossberg shotguns as they had been on the sofa watching tv on Aug. 20, 1989.
They had been first tried in 1993, and juries deadlocked, leading to mistrials. They had been then retried and convicted of first-degree homicide in 1996.
Prosecutors on the time argued that the brothers had been motivated by greed and mentioned they killed their mother and father to inherit a fortune and went on a spending spree after the slayings.
CORRECTION (Oct. 30, 2024, 10:05 p.m. ET): A earlier model of this text misstated Erik Menendez’s age. He is 53, not 54.
Andrew Blankstein contributed.