Menéndez Brothers’s long -awaited probation audience to start on Thursday: what he needs to know
Lyle and Erik Menéndez go to their long -awaited probation, marking a big step forward in their thrust to be released after 35 years after bars.
This is what you need to know:
The probation process
The Erik Menéndez’s probation audience is scheduled for Thursday and the Lyle Menéndez hearing will be Friday. After the audiences conclude, the Board of Probation will determine whether the brothers are suitable for probation.
The relatives of the brothers said they know that the probation process is “rigorous”, but that they are “cautiously optimistic.”
Erik Menéndez and his brother Lyle (R) listen during an audience prior to the trial, on December 29, 1992, in Los Angeles after the two declared themselves innocent in the deaths of a shotgun of August 1989 of their parents, José and Mary Louise Menéndez.
Vince Bucci/AFP through Getty Images
“For more than 35 years, they have shown sustained growth. They have assumed complete responsibility,” Menéndez’s family said in a statement on Wednesday. “They express sincere regret to our family to this day and have built a significant life defined by a purpose and service.”
After the decisions of the Board of Probation, the final decisions on probation will go to the governor of California Gavin Newsom to approve, deny or modify the decision, according to the Office of the District Prosecutor of the Los Angeles County. If probation is granted, they would be eligible for liberation immediately after the decision is finalized, which takes about five months, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of California. If probation is denied, denial could be for three, five, seven, 10 or 15 years, according to the department.
“Newsom can also exercise its power of clemency to forgive or free the Menéndez brothers at any time,” said the prosecutor’s office.
The long impulse of the brothers for liberation
Lyle Menéndez, now 57, and Erik Menéndez, now 54, were initially sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of probation for the 1989 murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menéndez.
Lyle Menéndez was 21 years old and Erik Menéndez was 18 years old at the time of crime. They said they committed the murders in self -defense after years of abuse by their father.
The County of the, Da Nathan Hochman, has fought against his release, qualifying the claims of the self -defense brothers part of a litany of “lies.” But the brothers have the support of more than 20 family members in their efforts to be released.
Erik Menéndez with his lawyer Leslie Abramson and his brother Lyle Menéndez in Los Angeles, on March 9, 1994.
Ted Soqui/Sygma through Getty Images
A new prayer
This May, Judge Michael Jesus resonent Erik and Lyle Menéndez for 50 years of life in prison, which follows the recommendation made in October by the then County De-La George Gascón. This new prayer makes them immediately eligible for probation.
The judge said he was moved by the support letters of the prison guards and was surprised by the work that the brothers had achieved to improve the lives of their fellow prisoners.
This combination of two reserve photos provided by the California corrections department shows Erik Menéndez, on the left and Lyle Menéndez.
CDCR
The brothers, who observed the prison resentment hearing, gave their own statements to the judge, admitting their guilt.
“I killed my mother and my dad,” Lyle Menéndez told Jesus. “I don’t give excuses.”
Lyle Menéndez admitted to having committed perjury when lied in court in the 90s and apologized to his family for years of lies and the shock and pain of crimes.
Lyle Menéndez, October 10, 2024.
CDCR
Erik Menéndez also admitted to having lied for years and apologized.
“I committed an atrocious act,” he told the judge. “… there is no justification for what I did.”
Erik Menéndez added that “a long road has come on this path” of redemption and said: “I will not stop making a make a difference.”
Erik Menéndez, October 10, 2024.
CDCR
Offer for a new test
Meanwhile, the brothers are following another path separated from the probation process.
In 2023, they presented a request for habeas corpus to try to obtain another trial based on new evidence not originally presented in the Court.
The petition has two pieces of new tests. One is the accusations of a former member of the Band of Children often, who revealed in the docuseries of 2023 “Menéndez + often: Boys betrayed” that he was raped by José Menéndez. The second is a letter that Erik Menéndez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detail his alleged abuse; The cousin testified about the alleged abuse in the trial, but the letter, which would have corroborated the testimony of the cousin, did not unearthed until several years ago, according to the brothers’ lawyer.
This month, Hochman presented a response to Habeas Corpus’s request, stating that “he concluded that this request is not close to complying with the factual or legal standard to guarantee a new trial.”
“The central defense of the Menéndez brothers in the trial has always been self -defense, not sexual abuse. The jury rejected this defense of self -defense by finding them guilty of the horrible murders that perpetrated; five different appeal courts and the federal courts have affirmed those convictions, and nothing in the so -called ‘new’ challenges of those determinations,” Hochman said in a statement. “Our opposition to this effort of ‘Salve María’ to obtain a new trial more than 30 years later makes it clear that justice, facts and law demand sentences.”
