LOS ANGELES — The district attorney for Los Angeles County said Wednesday he wants the California governor to grant clemency for Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who are serving life sentences for killing their parents in 1989.
District Attorney George Gascón’s announcement that he supports clemency requests by the pair comes less than a week after he recommended that they be resentenced in their murder case.
“I strongly support clemency for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are currently serving sentences of life without possibility of parole,” Gascón said in a statement. “They have respectively served 34 years and have continued their educations and worked to create new programs to support the rehabilitation of fellow inmates.”
Attorneys for the Menendez brothers submitted requests for clemency to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday.
Clemency would allow the Menendez brothers, whose initial televised trial was a national media sensation, to be released immediately, and is separate from the resentencing effort.
A spokesperson for Newsom’s office declined to comment as to whether Newsom, a Democrat, is inclined to grant clemency.
“Pending clemency applications are confidential and we’re not able to discuss individual cases,” the spokesperson said in an email. There is no set timeline for the clemency review.
The brothers killed their parents, entertainment company executive José Menendez and Kitty Menendez, with shotguns in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
Defense attorneys for the brothers argued they were sexually abused by their father. After two trials, they were convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole. At the second trial, most of the sexual abuse claims were deemed inadmissible in court.
Gascón, a progressive district attorney who was elected in 2020 and who is up for reelection this year, filed a motion on Oct. 24 asking that the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life.
If granted, that could allow the brothers to be eligible for parole immediately, Gascón said, because they were younger than 26 years old when they committed the crimes. Lyle Menendez was 21 and Erik Menendez was 18 at the time of the killings.
A Superior Court judge will decide whether they should be resentenced. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 11 in the resentencing effort.
Attorneys for the Menendez brothers argued in clemency requests that they both were sexually abused by their father beginning at a young age. Lyle Menendez was molested by his father until he was 8 years old, and Erik Menendez was sexually abused from age 6 until the killings, their attorneys wrote.
Each has worked to rehabilitate themselves, each earned a degree, and they created new programs to help other inmates, their attorneys wrote in the letters. That and their age — Lyle Menendez is 56 and Erik Menendez is 54 — make each “an exemplary candidate for clemency,” the attorneys wrote.
The Menendez brothers shot their parents multiple times with Mossberg shotguns as they were on the couch watching television on Aug. 20, 1989.
They were first tried in 1993, and juries deadlocked resulting in mistrials. They were then retried and were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996.
Prosecutors at the time argued that the brothers were motivated by greed, and that they killed their parents to inherit a fortune and went on a spending spree after the slayings.
Andrew Blankstein contributed.