Menendez-Brüder: Hope for release after 35 years wanks!

Menendez-Brüder: Hope for release after 35 years wanks!

The Menendez brothers, Erik and Lyle, who are sitting behind bars in 1990 due to the brutal murder of their wealthy parents, have to wait longer for their freedom. A judge in Los Angeles has set the next hearing for January 30, 2025, which means that the hope of a possible release before the end of the year is resolved. A court date was originally planned for December 11th, but it was now postponed.

The brothers, which is now 53 and 56 year old, were arrested in the living room after a shocking crime in Beverly Hills, where they shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. At first they denied the act, but later they claimed to have been abused by their parents for years. These serious allegations were not adequately treated in their first process, which led to the termination of the procedure. In the second trial in 1996, they were finally convicted of double murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility.

New light on the case

Now, decades later, the case is rolled up again by two Netflix documentaries. The brothers submitted an application for mercy with the Californian governor Gavin Newsom, and their lawyers are calling for the judgment to be abolished. The new district prosecutor of Los Angeles, George Gascón, supports a new sentence with a milder sentence. He argues that awareness of male victims of sexual violence was not sufficient in the 1990s. If a judge agreed, the brothers could be released almost 35 years after their arrest.

At the hearing on Monday, the brothers were switched on by phone, while their aunts in the courtroom pleaded for them. Joan Vandermolen, the 92-year-old sister of Kitty Menendez, and Teresita Baralt, 85, sister of Jose Menendez, expressed that no child should suffer the agony that Erik and Lyle went through. The discussion about their possible release takes on driving while the legal framework is changing.