The judge who will decide the fate of Erik and Lyle Menendez could do way more than what the D.A. is asking for ... he could free them the very day he hears their case.
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00:00All this judge can do is say they're eligible for immediate parole, then it has to go to the parole board.
00:09You've had a lot of experience with this.
00:12What do you think the odds are that the parole board is going to say, yep, we're going to release him?
00:17Well, I think there's a wide variety of things that Judge Bryant could actually do, Harvey, to get these brothers out.
00:27The reason why the Menendez brothers are going to be in front of him is because of a new law that took place in January of 2023.
00:35And that's when their lawyers jumped on this and filed their motions.
00:39And that new law gives judges much wider discretion to strike special circumstances, to even re-sentence under a lesser included offense.
00:52So if Judge Ryan were to find that voluntary manslaughter in this case is a lesser included to the first degree murder charges,
01:00he can sentence them on the voluntary manslaughter charges.
01:03Wait, that's not what Gascon asked for, because I thought Gascon might do that.
01:09But Gascon didn't ask that the lesser charged voluntary manslaughter be superimposed.
01:15All he said was, we're going to ask that, essentially, that the judge re-sentence him based on the new law,
01:23and that they would be eligible for immediate parole.
01:26That's what Gascon said.
01:27Are you saying the judge could actually go farther and actually release them, essentially, even before going to the parole board?
01:34That is my understanding.
01:36And remember, the Menendez brothers have lawyers.
01:38And they may be really happy with the DA in terms of re-sentencing or agreeing to re-sentence and have the Menendez brothers go in front of the parole board.
01:49But they also might be asking for the judge to even take it a step further and take the extraordinary step of releasing them himself.
01:57Wow.
01:58So the judge could do that on his own accord, even if the DA didn't ask for that.
02:01That's my understanding.
02:03These are new laws that haven't been in effect for a long time.
02:07So different people may have different interpretations of them.
02:10But I would not be surprised if Mark Garagos, he's a creative, smart lawyer himself, goes in front of Judge Ryan and says,
02:18we appreciate what the DA is doing, Your Honor, but we want the court to go even further.
02:22Wow.