Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón says he'll make a decision on the Menendez brothers' resentencing by the end of this week, citing the growing public push to release the brothers as his reasoning. Gascón previously announced in October that his office was reviewing the 2023 habeas corpus petition filed by Erik and Lyle Menendez, which contains new evidence and asks for a resentencing of the brothers who are currently serving life in prison without parole for the 1989 murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez.
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00:00Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon says he'll make a decision on the Menendez
00:04brothers' re-sentencing by the end of this week, citing the growing public push to release the
00:08brothers as his reasoning. Gascon previously announced that his office was reviewing the 2023
00:13habeas corpus petition filed by Eric and Lyle Menendez, which contains new evidence and asks
00:18for a re-sentencing of the brothers, who are currently serving life in prison without parole,
00:22for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
00:26The DA had previously set a hearing date for November 29, but speaking to CNN on Tuesday,
00:31Gascon, who is currently up for re-election, shared that he has moved up his timeline.
00:35He told Jake Tapper,
00:36I plan to have a decision by the end of this week,
00:39which is what I promised when we started getting a lot of inquiries.
00:42We had been looking at this case for over a year, by the way.
00:45We had a court time late November on the habeas, but given the public attention to this case,
00:49I've tried to come up with a decision earlier than that, and I will."
00:52The announcement followed the recently renewed interest in the decades-old case,
00:56thanks in large part to the hit Netflix drama series from Ryan Murphy,
00:59Monsters, the Lyle and Eric Menendez story, as well as the subsequent Netflix documentary
01:03that interviewed the brothers together for the first time in decades.
01:06The newly uncovered evidence that led to the habeas petition includes a recovered letter
01:10written by a then-17-year-old Eric to his cousin in 1988, eight months before the murders,
01:15that corroborates the brothers' self-defense claims of ongoing abuse from their father,
01:20as well as an abuse claim from a new witness, a member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo,
01:24that was signed to RCA Records, where Jose was an executive.
01:27Last week, Eric and Lyle Menendez's extended family held a press conference calling for
01:31Gascon's help to overturn the brothers' convictions or re-sentence them.
01:35Their aunt, Joan Anderson Vandermolen, Kitty Menendez's sister,
01:38was one of the family members who spoke in front of the downtown Los Angeles courthouse.
01:43The truth is Lyle and Eric were failed by the very people who should have protected them,
01:48by their parents, by the system, by society at large.
01:52As their aunt,
01:56I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered at the hands of my brother-in-law.
02:03None of us did.
02:06But looking back, I can see the fear and tension that their father had instilled on them.
02:12They were just children, children who could have been protected
02:17and were instead brutalized in the most horrific ways.
02:22For more on this story, go to THR.com. This is The Hollywood Reporter News.