After a number of hearings and delays, Lyle and Erik Menendez have been resentenced on Tuesday to life with the potential of parole, shifting them a step nearer to freedom after greater than three many years behind bars for killing their mother and father.
The choice, by a Los Angeles choose, got here after a day of testimony by members of the family in assist of the brothers’ launch. The brothers additionally spoke by way of video, taking accountability for his or her crimes and apologizing to their relations.
The resentencing, by Decide Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court docket, now makes the brothers eligible to go earlier than a parole board. A listening to has already been scheduled for subsequent month, beneath a separate clemency petition being thought-about by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
The brand new Los Angeles County district legal professional, Nathan J. Hochman, who was elected on guarantees to take a more durable line on crime, had argued in opposition to a lighter sentence. Decide Jesic had already rejected multiple requests by Mr. Hochman to withdraw a resentencing petition put ahead by Mr. Hochman’s predecessor.
The resentencing effort and clemency petition are the first authorized pathways that would result in the brothers’ freedom.
It was greater than 35 years in the past that Lyle and Erik Menendez — then 21 and 18 — walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired greater than a dozen shotgun rounds at their mother and father, killing them each.
