Menendez brothers’ lawyer to seek transfer of case citing conflict of interest
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Attorney wants case to be transferred to state before new prosecutor takes office as resentencing hearing nears. The public and legal drive to free Erik and Lyle Menendez, the notorious Los Angeles brothers who murdered their parents Jose and Mary “Kitty” Menendez in 1989, has taken a new political turn as they await a resentencing hearing a month into the new year.
An attorney – representing 24 family members of Kitty and Jose Menendez who support the brothers’ release – plans to file a petition to transfer the case from Los Angeles county to the California attorney general’s office, citing a conflict of interest.
The planned petition comes as Los Angeles county is about to see a change in prosecutor. Elections in November saw the defeat of the progressive district attorney George Gascón, who previously said he was open to the brothers’ resentencing. Lyle and Erik Menendez have been in prison 35 years for the crime with no possibility of parole. They have consistently claimed they killed their parents out of fear for their lives following years of sexual abuse.
Gascón said his office was evaluating whether the brothers should remain in prison for the rest of their lives and that he had a “moral and ethical obligation to review what is being presented”. An extraordinary push for the Menendez brothers to be freed bubbled up in the wake of a sympathetic Netflix documentary and new claims that Jose Menendez, a former RCA Records executive, had also allegedly abused Roy Rosselló, a former member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boyband Menudo. There was also the recent discovery of a letter from Erik Menendez to a cousin that was penned before the murders in which he discussed his father’s abuse.
