(Reuters) -A Los Angeles prosecutor said on Thursday he is asking the court to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez after they have spent 34 years in prison for the shotgun murder of their parents, after new evidence emerged indicating they were sexually abused by their father for years.
The recommendation raises the possibility that the brothers will be released on parole.
“I believe that under the law resentencing is appropriate and I am going to recommend that to a court tomorrow,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon told a press conference.
Gascon said he would recommend that their life sentences be removed and replaced with a sentence of 50 years to life, but that they would be eligible for parole because of their young age at the time of the murders.
“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascon said.
The Menendez brothers, now 56 and 53, were convicted after the second of two highly publicized trials that captivated the United States at the time because of their wealth and privilege as the sons of a record company and entertainment industry executive.
Jose Menendez was shot in the back of the head and Kitty Menendez was shot 15 times at their Beverly Hills home. Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 at the time.
A recent Netflix series dramatizing their story revived interest in the case, but for more than a year defense lawyers have been in talks with prosecutors about vacating the sentence or seeking a new trial, citing new evidence that came to light supporting the brothers’ claim they had been molested for years.
In their first trial, which was televised and ended in a hung jury in 1994, the brothers testified they were sexually mistreated by both parents for years and were acting in self defense, and that their father threatened to kill them if they revealed the abuse.
Prosecutors argued the pair were seeking their parents’ multimillion-dollar fortune.
A jury convicted them in a second trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court that was not televised, but that same jury also spared them the death penalty, opting for life in prison without parole.
Gascon has said there is no doubt the brothers killed their parents but cited new evidence including a letter Erik Menendez purportedly wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders in which he described the abuse. Had the evidence been presented at trial the jury may have reached a different outcome, he said.
Investigators also are examining allegations from a member of the 1980s pop band Menudo who said he was abused by Jose Menendez. Those allegations were publicized last year in Peacock documentary series called “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.”
Gascon also said he was concerned by comments from a member of the prosecution team at the time that men could not be raped. “Our office has developed a more modern understanding of sexual violence since the Menendez brothers first faced prosecution,” Gascon said in an Oct. 16 statement.
Gascon previously said he would wait until a Nov. 26 court hearing to made a decision on the case, but he sped up the decision given the intense public interest.
He also faces a difficult re-election battle against challenger Nathan Hochman on Nov. 5.
The district attorney told CNN on Wednesday that the case had split his office into two camps.
“I have a group of people, including some that were involved in the original trial, that are adamant that they should spend the rest of their life in prison and that they were not molested,” Gascon said. “I have other people in the office that believe actually that they probably were molested and that they deserve to have some relief.”
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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