It’s not over for the Menendez brothers!
Meme credit: @thousand.foot.cliff
Parole deniedLast week Erik and Lyle faced separate parole board panels in record-breaking 10- and 11-hour long hearings, in their bid for freedom after 35+ years behind bars. Both were denied.
While that ruling disappointed all who support them, it wasn’t surprising to anyone who knew that parole is rarely granted on the first try. To those who think the hearings were rigged I say: So what else is new? The Menendez brothers can’t catch a break.
But it’s not overIt’s the beginning of the end, and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
How can I be hopeful after so long and so many disappointments? Well, for most of their incarceration, as LWOP (life without parole) prisoners, they had zero hope of ever being paroled. That’s what makes their transformation all the more remarkable. It was a miracle that they were resentenced after all this time and are now eligible for parole.
Blog post: Menendez Miracle #6
Come on, Miracle #7!
Take it from a close friend of Erik’s and Lyle’s — Anerae Brown, aka rapper X-Raided — who spent 26 years behind bars, and who credits the brothers for helping him succeed on his path to parole:
Why a Three Year Denial is good(It’s a TikTok. If you don’t have an account, and if it asks you to create one, just say no. You should then be able to watch it with no problem.)
Here it is in chart form (my favorite), from Instagram Menendez supporter @thousand.foot.cliff:
They were each given a “three-year denial”. This means on the surface that they are eligible to reapply for parole in three years. (Which is the best case for a denial, when you consider the other options are five, seven, ten and fifteen years.) But in practice, I’m told, they will likely have an administrative review after 12 months and possibly be approved to go back before the parole board in 18 months.
Was the hearing rigged? Attorney Mark Geragos certainly thinks so! Maybe the decision can be appealed, but meanwhile, Lyle and Erik need to be on their best behavior — better than best — if they want a favorable ruling next time.
Habeas Corpus PetitionIn July, Judge Ryan ruled that the two pieces of “new” evidence (easily Googled) “would have more likely than not changed the outcome of their second trial.” This is good news, but I hope to God there’s something that can be done here short of an actual third trial.
Here’s a fun fact for those who think the Netflix Monsters series started it all: The habeas petition was filed by the brothers’ lawyers two days after the Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed documentary aired in May 2023.
ClemencyThis case has been a political football since the beginning. Governor Newsom can grant them clemency whenever he wants. Despite changes in societal understanding of the psychological effects of sexual abuse, and new laws pertaining to youth offenders, no one wants to be the one to let the Menendez brothers go free.
I think he believes them and wants to help them out, but he doesn’t want to ruin his political career over it. No matter how many thousands of new supporters the brothers have gained in recent years, there are still millions of others who hate them and think they should die in prison. And the new raft of media reports about the hearings are all focused on rule-breaking at the expense of describing their otherwise model citizenry. My prediction is that Newsom will approve the parole board’s decision if and when they eventually grant them parole, but that he won’t grant clemency on his own. I’m also completely open to being pleasantly surprised!
They’re not perfect
Lyle and Erik are flawed human beings. Who isn’t? They’re not angels, nor are they monsters. They did a terrible thing, in a spectacularly brutal fashion, and have spent 35-years-and-counting paying for it. They grew up in prison. They became responsible men who not only have improved and educated themselves, but who have also contributed to their prison society by leading and creating new programs so that others could succeed after they were released, even before they themselves had hope of being released someday.
The justice system has failed them time and time again. Prisons are not focused on rehabilitation, they’re focused on punishment. But maybe Lyle and Erik can help change that.
Blog Post: Inspiring Prison Programs
This is a portion of the mural at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility. It is part of Lyle’s Green Space project, with Erik participating as lead painter.
It seems their worst crime in recent years has been forbidden cell phone usage. Does that mean they are a violent risk to society? Absolutely not! Does it mean they think they are above the law? Maybe so.
One of the parole commissioners expressed disapproval of the fact that brothers’ supporters only seem to know about the good things they’ve done in prison. Oh, c’mon! Could it be because most of the infractions were 20-30 years ago, before a lot of their new supporters were even born? Or that they weren’t egregious? The brothers have no direct access to social media and rely on their families to represent them there . (Fun fact: Facebook was introduced in 2004, ten years after the first trial ended.) How were they supposed to let us know every time they broke a rule? And what business is it of ours, anyway? I, for one, am happy with the reports I get of their progress and well-being and don’t need to be privy to their every thought and deed.
Fair or not, if they can avoid infractions for the next 18 months they will likely be able to go before the parole board sooner than three years and have a good chance of being approved next time.
Remorse and responsibilityDA Hochman is fond of saying the brothers have not yet expressed remorse for their crime and have not taken responsibility for it. Uh, where has he been? I have heard them publicly express remorse and take responsibility many times over the past three decades, starting when I sat in the jury box and watched their grueling weeks-long testimony in 1993 from ten feet away. Ask their families if they seem remorseful enough. I think the families should be the judge of that, not DA Hochman. (Don’t get me started on how the families have been treated over this past year.)
Imperfect self-defenseDA Hochman also loves to talk about how this wasn’t self-defense. Spoiler alert: THEY NEVER SAID IT WAS.
In the first trial their legal claim was Imperfect Self-defense.
Imperfect Self-defense is a legal doctrine in which a defendant killed another person while holding an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury. It acts as a partial defense to murder, reducing a homicide charge to voluntary manslaughter rather than a complete acquittal. The defense applies when at least one element of a perfect self-defense claim is not met because the defendant’s belief was unreasonable, even if it was genuinely held.
I get why the general public doesn’t know about this, but DA Hochman should know better. Unfortunately his microphone is bigger than mine.
The brothers never said “we were right” that their lives were in imminent danger. They said, “we were afraid” and — because of the hypervigilance they developed during their abusive childhoods — they thought their lives were in imminent danger. (And the prosecution did not offer a single expert witness to refute it.)
This defense was disallowed, unfairly so, in the second trial. That jury had no choice but to convict them of first-degree murder. Mission accomplished, DA Garcetti and Judge Weisberg! Congratulations. Tell me again why you needed to be right, and not fair? Oh, that’s right, because you were being ridiculed in the press for losing high-profile cases. This chart helps to explain:
CLICK the image to view and print full-sized chart. “FINALLY” is, of course, from the POV of the DA, not from my own POV. Fun fact: Guess who the prosecutor was in the McMartin case? Pam Bozanich.
I wish I had thought to create this flow chart in the jury deliberation room, and not 20 years later. I wonder if it would have made a difference?
What’s YOUR verdict? CLICK the image to view, download, and print the full-sized (free) PDF chart. SHARE it with both supporters and doubters. Order your copy of my book here: Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror
Too much focus on the past
Yes, they killed their parents, and in a spectacularly brutal manner. For that they have served 35+ years. (People forget, when they say 30 years, that they were arrested in March 1990.)
However, I did think that the focus of a parole hearing was supposed to be more about rehabilitation and whether they’d be a danger to society if released than about re-trying the original crime.
If we’re going to dwell in the past, though, let us not forget:
Two juries saw ALL of the evidence in the first trial. They were BOTH hung, with half of EACH jury voting for manslaughter, not murder. It was not mandatory that they be retried at all.The second trial jury saw only a portion of the evidence, with much of it being presented out of context. It was a travesty of justice, as I’ve described in the 2018 revised edition of my book Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror .In their 2005 appeal, 9th Circuit Court Justice Alex Kozinski said he believed there had been “collusion between the DA’s office and Judge Stanley Weisberg” to manipulate the second trial to guarantee a first-degree murder resolution, not manslaughter as it should have been. In spite of his remarks, Justice Kozinski voted against the appeal and upheld the verdict. (Source: Justice Kozinski on Erik Tells All.)I still believe in miracles
I created this chart in 2017 and have been predicting and keeping track of the miracles ever since.
–> CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW & PRINT FULL-SIZED CHART
Everyone’s an expert these days
It used to be that only a handful of people were willing to speak up on behalf of the Menendez brothers in news interviews, articles, documentaries, and podcasts. Now the “room” (including all social media platforms, none of which existed in the early ‘90s) is so crowded that my introverted little voice is all but drowned out.
I used to wonder what could happen to make me change my mind about the case and the brothers. But if cell phones are the worst the parole board can dredge up in recent years, I’m still on board.
You will be, and already have been, hearing less from me, though, because (among other reasons) I’m 30 years older too. Social media platforms keep changing, and it’s hard to keep up.
I’ll be honest — I was hoping parole would be granted because I’m looking forward to this all being over for ME. I see any amount of vindication for the Menendez brothers as vindication for me, too, as a female juror who voted for manslaughter, not murder, and who has been mocked for it, by the uneducated and unsympathetic, ever since. Likewise, their supporters are my supporters. Including you, probably, if you’ve read this far. And for that I sincerely thank you!
Meanwhile, the story’s not over.
The question was always why?
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