October 31, 2024 • 21 mins
When Lyle Menendez was just a young teenager, he wrote an essay in school that was far from typical for a young boy. In this episode, Lyle and Erik’s lawyer discusses the significance of that essay and why it plays a critical role in their fight for freedom.
We also provide a real-time update on the case and the latest reactions.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appoche production. Since we started releasing these episodes, a lot
has happened with Lyle and Eric's bid to get parole.
We'll touch on that in this episode. We'll also talk
to their lawyer, Cliff Gardner, about what are the options
for the district attorney who's looking at this case again
after thirty odd years. But to begin with, we've heard
(00:30):
a lot from lots of different people about their thoughts
on the Netflix dramatization and how it differed from the
actual court case. Now, Lyle and Eric have both been
married while they've been in jail. Lyle was married twice,
once in nineteen ninety six. It was actually on the
same day that he and Eric were sentenced to life
(00:51):
without parole. It was done via a speakerphone while he
was in jail and his bright Anna was in their
lawyer's office. The marriage didn't last. That one ended in
two thousand and one. His second marriage was to Rebecca Snead,
a journalist her new lyal since the nineteen nineties. Their
(01:12):
relationship developed during her visits to prison, and they're still
married today. Eric has been married once to Tammy. He
got married in jail in nineteen ninety nine, Tammy saw
Eric on TV while she was married to someone else,
she felt compelled to reach out. Tammy has been a
supporter of Eric since nineteen ninety nine. She wrote a
(01:32):
book called They Said We'd Never Make It My Life
with Eric Menendez. Tammy's also really vocal on social media,
and post the airing of the Netflix special, she took
to social media to express Eric's thoughts on the TV show.
These are her words, but not her voice.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Eric's response to the Netflix series. In Eric's words, I
believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character
portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in
horrible and bleateant lies rampant in the show. I can
only believe they were done so on purpose. It is
with a heavy heart that I say I believe Ryan
(02:12):
Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts
of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.
It is sad for me to know that Netflix's dishonest
portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the
painful truths several steps backward, back through time to an
err when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief
system that males were not sexually abused and that males
(02:35):
experienced rape trauma differently than women. Those awful lies have
been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the
last two decades who have broken through their personal shame
and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible
narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and
of me, and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?
(02:59):
Let the truth stand as the truth? How demoralizing to
know that one man with power can and undermined decades
of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma. Violence is
never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic
as such. I hope it has never forgotten that violence
against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes,
(03:21):
darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamour, and rarely exposed until
tragedy penetrates everyone involved. To all those who have reached
out and supported me, thank you from the bottom of
my heart.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We heard in the last episode about cousin Andy's letter
that formed a part of the writ of habeas corpus
to have the brothers paroled. Cliff Gardner, who represents both
the brothers, now told me about another piece of information
that hasn't been covered widely. It's about an essay that
Lyle wrote before the murders. He was a teenager at school.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
What Lyle did was he wrote an essay called that
will Change a verdict about a man who kills someone
and has put on death row, and he kills the
person who has molested his son. Aloweather writes this three
page essay for school about a man who murders someone,
who protects his family by murdering the person who molested
(04:24):
his son. Is put on death row, and he's going
to leave and be unable to protect his son because
he's about to be executed. Now, as I say I
have two boys, I know you have two girls. This
is a very unusual subject for a teenage boy to
write about, incredibly unusual, And this, of course is excluded
(04:45):
by the judge at the second trial. Boy, my recollection
is to this rationale was that the judge said it
was too remote. Now, of course, the defense is that
the boys had a lifetime of abuse, so how anything
can be too remote? He is an utter mystery to me,
but it wasn't a mystery to the judge who excluded it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Get some legal clarification here on a couple of things.
The difference between manslaughter and murder.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Okay, put put on your complex heat. The difference between
manslaughter and murder under California law is murder is an
unlawful killing with what's called malice a fourthough, and malice
the fourth That doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's just a legal construct. Manslaughter is a killing without malice.
Malice is generally defined as an intent to kill, but
(05:32):
not always so. For example, in the self defense context,
if you honestly and reasonably believe that you need to
kill in order to save your life, that's a killing
without malice. It's not an unlawful killing, and you have
no malice even though you may intend to kill. So
there are certain states of mind that can interfere with
or rebut the finding of malice leaving you with an
(05:52):
unlawful killing, which is.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Manslaugh, and so from a sentencing perspective.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Huge difference. So the sentence for second degree murder is
fifteen to life. First degree murder is the death penalty.
Life without parole, life in prison, and the sentence from
manslaughter taps off at eleven years of steak.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Now, the jury in the ninety sixth trial was given
instructions distinguishing the difference between manslaughter and murder. Is that unusual?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
No, no, guys, you know that should happen in all
cases where manslaughter is at humption. The problem is that
the evidence that would have allowed the jury to get
to manslaughter, Diane Vandermulden's testimony, the essay that Loud wrote,
and a lot of other family witnesses weren't allowed to testify,
so they didn't really have the same evidentiary basis to
(06:39):
get to manslaughter. They also didn't have an important defense
instruction that it would have given them the pathway to
get to manslaugh.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
The second trial, from what I read, the jury deliberated
for a long time, thirty five hours ish. If you're
a lawyer, do you think, well, the longer it goes,
the more chance we have here.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Well, certainly in the post conviction context, the longer the
jury deliberates these lots of case life that says that
shows they're struggling with the case. And just to clarify
the record this jury at the second chart, I deliberated
thirty five hours. They came back, they actually had to
discharge I think one or two jurors, and they receded
two of the alternates, and they deliberated another twenty hours.
(07:21):
So in total it was about fifty five hours. That is,
by any measure, even a case which had as much
evidence as this, fifty five hours is a long deliberation,
showing that jurors were struggling with this.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
What's the law now? Because I've seen it on a
couple of docos where members from those cases have come
forward and said, actually, had we have known about the
abuse or more evidence presented in the abuse case in
ninety six, we might have had a different outcome.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Sure, the laws to whether jurors can come forward with
that and speak publicly, they're completely allowed. To the laws
to whether it's it would be significant to a judge
looking at the probably not so much. There are some limitations,
many limitations on the kind of evidence you can present
from a juror about the delibery, the deliberative process that
they went through, and judges in some cases rightfully say
(08:20):
the danger here is that you know any juror may
have a buyer's regret or buyer's remorse, and so we
want to guard the system against that. So I understand.
I don't know if any jurors have said that here.
They may have, but it's not it's not a game
breaker by any means.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Can we talk now about the current court proceedings, what's
going on right now, the heaviest corpus that you raised
in twenty three, and where's it at right now?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Okay? So we file a habeas petition on the brother's behalf,
on both Eric and Lyle's behalf. I remember I was
appointed only to represent Lyle years ago. Now I'm representing
them both in connection with thehaviens that was filed in
May of twenty twenty three. The way the process works
in California State Court is that once ahavior's petition is filed,
(09:16):
the judge has three options. The judge can deny the petition,
the judge can ask the state for what's called an
informal reply, or the judge can issue an order what's
called an order to show cause, which is just a
fancy way of saying the court wants not an informal reply,
but a formal reply, where they have to answer all
the allegations of the petition. The court here took that
(09:37):
second option and said, Okay, you've raised this petition. I
want an informal reply from the state, being represented by
the district attorney that is currently due in late November.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Can ask what are the options for the state.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
The state could say they could raise any number of
procedural defenses. They could say, wait a minute, this is untimely.
You took too long to raise this. They could say,
wait a minute, you filed all these doc I means
years ago, so this is successive. Or they could say,
we're not going to raise proscedural defenses, but we disagree
with you on the merits. We think that your information
(10:16):
isn't sufficient to warrant a new trial. Or they could say, yeah,
we're persuaded. We're going to waive our procedural defenses or
not raise them because we think this is genuinely new
evidence and we're persuaded that it might have led to
a different result, probably would have led to a different result,
and so we're not going to stand in the way
(10:38):
of the court granting relief. So there's a whole range
of options the state has.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Does public interest play into that in any way.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It's a great question. I never worked in a DA's office,
so I don't know. In a way, I hope it doesn't,
at least in a larger perspective, because many of my
cases don't have the public interest in our favor, and
I'd hate to think that the merits of my legal
position or being dictated by whether my client was fortunate
(11:08):
enough to have a Netflix special or a Netflix documentary.
On the other hand, if if that weighs into the
end of the calculus here, I'd certainly be uh be
happy for Eric and while but in the greater scheme
of things, it would be nice to think that the
merits of a claim didn't depend on the existence of
documentaries or dramatic representations that made people sympathetic.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
What's the best case scenario for you and the brothers?
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know, there's another option the DA has that's that's
separate and apart from responding to the habeas petition, and
that's what we have in California. We call it a
resentencing crecy. The DA has full authority to call for
resentencing and sometimes in some cases the judges have power
to call for resentencing in my mind, I think the
(12:04):
the justice of the case and the easiest way to
resolve it in what I consider a fair way. And
I understand there's many das that are not are going
to disagree and think that this isn't the fair way,
But in my position, from my perspective, this case has
always never been about innocence. It's always been about the
level of culpability. I have never believed that Lyle and
(12:25):
Eric were as culpable as cold blooded, premeditated first degree murders.
I think what they did was wrong, and I think
manslaughter is to measure with their culpability level. So to me,
the perfect end of this story, or as perfect as
you can get now, would be for the DA to
(12:45):
call for resentencing and to resentence the brothers to manslaughter.
And I suspect, given the extraordinary amount of time they've served,
that would end up with them being released with time served.
The likelihood, oh boy, A legal question. That's a political one,
(13:07):
and I don't know the answer to it. If I
put aside the politics, and I just I look at
this and I think, what would a fair minded person
do reviewing this evidence. I don't know that you can
look at the combination of things, the combination of Diane
Vandermullen's testimony which was excluded, Lyle's essay which was excluded,
(13:30):
the new letter from Eric to Andy, which talks about
him fearing that his dad is going to come in
any night, and it's happening again, and it's still happening Andy.
And then you look at the fact that at least
one member of Manudo has come forward to say that
Jose Menendez violently raped him as well when he was
a young teenager. I don't know how you can look
(13:52):
at all that and think, okay, that first of the
two questions we talked about, were they abused? That question
has been answered. I don't know how you can look
at this and say, Okay, we'll still argue that there
was no abuse. I think that that ship is saled again.
You may say, okay, there was abuse, but still this
(14:12):
merits and murder conviction. I don't reach that conclusion. I
don't once you accept the premise that this abuse occurred,
it seems to me the appropriate resolutionist a manslaughter conviction.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
On Friday October twenty five, twenty twenty four, the news
that Laarle and Eric had been waiting for was finally
released in a live press conference with the District Attorney
George Gascon.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Okay, good afternoon, everyone, And before I began speaking, I
want to also introduce some other people that are here
with me, and I want to hope I'm pronouncing the
names right, but I have Anamadia Barratsea, Menandez and niece,
Karen Bender, Morlan and Katie's niece. We're all here with us.
(15:06):
Let me begin by telling you that this is a
case where we've had many people in this office spend
a great deal of the time review on the case.
I have to tell you on equivocally that we don't
have a universal agreement. There are people in the office
(15:26):
that strongly believe that the Menana's brothers should stay in
prison the rest of their life, and they do not
believe that they were molested. And there are people in
the office that strongly believe that they should be released
immediately and that they were in fact molested. I have
to tell you that after a very careful review of
(15:50):
all the arguments that were made for people on both
sides of this equation, I came to a place where
I believe that under the law resentencing is appropriate. I
am going to recommend that to a court tomorrow. What
(16:11):
that means in this particular case is that we are
going to recommend to the court that the life without
the possibility of parole be removed and that they would
be sentenced for murder, which, because there are two murders involved,
that will be fifty years to life. However, because of
(16:32):
their age under the law, since they were under twenty
six years of age at the time that the crimes occurred,
they will be eligible for parole immediate. The reason why
I'm here today and why I came in front of
all of you about ten days ago, is because there
(16:54):
was a more recent documentary about the case that again
brought a tremendous amount of public attention, and there have
been other documentary, so this is not the first. This
is the more recent one, and frankly, our office got
flooded with requests for information, and even though this case
(17:18):
was already scheduled to be heard in late November, I
decided to move this forward because quite frankly, we did
not have enough resources to handle all the requests. And
one of the things that I thrived to do in
this office is to be very transparent in everything that
we do. When you look at the case of the
(17:40):
Menendez brothers, you see two very young people. One was
nineteen and the other one was twenty one when they
committed this horrible axe. And I want to underline there
were horrible acts. There is no excuse for murder, and
I will never imply that what we're doing here is
(18:03):
to excuse their behavior, because even if you get abuse,
the right path is to call the police seek help.
But I understand also how sometimes people get desperate. We
often see women, for instance, that have been better for years,
and sometimes they will murder their abuser out of desperation.
(18:28):
And I do believe that the brothers was subjected to
a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home in molestation.
They have been in prison for nearly thirty five years.
I believe that they have paid their debt to society,
(18:50):
and the system provides a vehicle for their case to
be reviewed by a parole boar, and the parole concurs
with my assessment, and it will be their decision. They
will be released accordingly. I must underline, however, this case
(19:14):
will be file in court tomorrow. The final decision will
be made by the judge. Court has to agree with
my conclusion that they deserve to be resentenced. It is
(19:35):
very possible that they may be members of this office
that will be present in court opposing their resentence.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
We're very sure.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Not only that the brothers have rehabilitated and that they
will be saved to be reintegrated in our society, but
that they have paid their dues, not only with the
crimes that they committed, because of all the other things
I have done to improve the life of so many others.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
In the next and final episode of Menendez The Monsters.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Thank you. I'm Mark Gerragis along with Cliff Gardner Alex Kazarian.
We represent Lyle and Eric Menendez.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That would be remissive me not to ask my chances
of chatting with Lyle through you.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Here's what I suggest you do. Is this something that
you want to put on the podcast or something for the.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Few on behalf of the family. I think I speak
for all of them. We thank the DA for what
he did today. These boys need to come home, and
today is a monumental, monumental victory on that path.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Us U
Appoche production. Since we started releasing these episodes, a lot
has happened with Lyle and Eric's bid to get parole.
We'll touch on that in this episode. We'll also talk
to their lawyer, Cliff Gardner, about what are the options
for the district attorney who's looking at this case again
after thirty odd years. But to begin with, we've heard
(00:30):
a lot from lots of different people about their thoughts
on the Netflix dramatization and how it differed from the
actual court case. Now, Lyle and Eric have both been
married while they've been in jail. Lyle was married twice,
once in nineteen ninety six. It was actually on the
same day that he and Eric were sentenced to life
(00:51):
without parole. It was done via a speakerphone while he
was in jail and his bright Anna was in their
lawyer's office. The marriage didn't last. That one ended in
two thousand and one. His second marriage was to Rebecca Snead,
a journalist her new lyal since the nineteen nineties. Their
(01:12):
relationship developed during her visits to prison, and they're still
married today. Eric has been married once to Tammy. He
got married in jail in nineteen ninety nine, Tammy saw
Eric on TV while she was married to someone else,
she felt compelled to reach out. Tammy has been a
supporter of Eric since nineteen ninety nine. She wrote a
(01:32):
book called They Said We'd Never Make It My Life
with Eric Menendez. Tammy's also really vocal on social media,
and post the airing of the Netflix special, she took
to social media to express Eric's thoughts on the TV show.
These are her words, but not her voice.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Eric's response to the Netflix series. In Eric's words, I
believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character
portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in
horrible and bleateant lies rampant in the show. I can
only believe they were done so on purpose. It is
with a heavy heart that I say I believe Ryan
(02:12):
Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts
of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.
It is sad for me to know that Netflix's dishonest
portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the
painful truths several steps backward, back through time to an
err when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief
system that males were not sexually abused and that males
(02:35):
experienced rape trauma differently than women. Those awful lies have
been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the
last two decades who have broken through their personal shame
and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible
narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and
of me, and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?
(02:59):
Let the truth stand as the truth? How demoralizing to
know that one man with power can and undermined decades
of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma. Violence is
never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic
as such. I hope it has never forgotten that violence
against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes,
(03:21):
darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamour, and rarely exposed until
tragedy penetrates everyone involved. To all those who have reached
out and supported me, thank you from the bottom of
my heart.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We heard in the last episode about cousin Andy's letter
that formed a part of the writ of habeas corpus
to have the brothers paroled. Cliff Gardner, who represents both
the brothers, now told me about another piece of information
that hasn't been covered widely. It's about an essay that
Lyle wrote before the murders. He was a teenager at school.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
What Lyle did was he wrote an essay called that
will Change a verdict about a man who kills someone
and has put on death row, and he kills the
person who has molested his son. Aloweather writes this three
page essay for school about a man who murders someone,
who protects his family by murdering the person who molested
(04:24):
his son. Is put on death row, and he's going
to leave and be unable to protect his son because
he's about to be executed. Now, as I say I
have two boys, I know you have two girls. This
is a very unusual subject for a teenage boy to
write about, incredibly unusual, And this, of course is excluded
(04:45):
by the judge at the second trial. Boy, my recollection
is to this rationale was that the judge said it
was too remote. Now, of course, the defense is that
the boys had a lifetime of abuse, so how anything
can be too remote? He is an utter mystery to me,
but it wasn't a mystery to the judge who excluded it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Get some legal clarification here on a couple of things.
The difference between manslaughter and murder.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Okay, put put on your complex heat. The difference between
manslaughter and murder under California law is murder is an
unlawful killing with what's called malice a fourthough, and malice
the fourth That doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's just a legal construct. Manslaughter is a killing without malice.
Malice is generally defined as an intent to kill, but
(05:32):
not always so. For example, in the self defense context,
if you honestly and reasonably believe that you need to
kill in order to save your life, that's a killing
without malice. It's not an unlawful killing, and you have
no malice even though you may intend to kill. So
there are certain states of mind that can interfere with
or rebut the finding of malice leaving you with an
(05:52):
unlawful killing, which is.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Manslaugh, and so from a sentencing perspective.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Huge difference. So the sentence for second degree murder is
fifteen to life. First degree murder is the death penalty.
Life without parole, life in prison, and the sentence from
manslaughter taps off at eleven years of steak.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Now, the jury in the ninety sixth trial was given
instructions distinguishing the difference between manslaughter and murder. Is that unusual?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
No, no, guys, you know that should happen in all
cases where manslaughter is at humption. The problem is that
the evidence that would have allowed the jury to get
to manslaughter, Diane Vandermulden's testimony, the essay that Loud wrote,
and a lot of other family witnesses weren't allowed to testify,
so they didn't really have the same evidentiary basis to
(06:39):
get to manslaughter. They also didn't have an important defense
instruction that it would have given them the pathway to
get to manslaugh.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
The second trial, from what I read, the jury deliberated
for a long time, thirty five hours ish. If you're
a lawyer, do you think, well, the longer it goes,
the more chance we have here.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Well, certainly in the post conviction context, the longer the
jury deliberates these lots of case life that says that
shows they're struggling with the case. And just to clarify
the record this jury at the second chart, I deliberated
thirty five hours. They came back, they actually had to
discharge I think one or two jurors, and they receded
two of the alternates, and they deliberated another twenty hours.
(07:21):
So in total it was about fifty five hours. That is,
by any measure, even a case which had as much
evidence as this, fifty five hours is a long deliberation,
showing that jurors were struggling with this.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
What's the law now? Because I've seen it on a
couple of docos where members from those cases have come
forward and said, actually, had we have known about the
abuse or more evidence presented in the abuse case in
ninety six, we might have had a different outcome.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Sure, the laws to whether jurors can come forward with
that and speak publicly, they're completely allowed. To the laws
to whether it's it would be significant to a judge
looking at the probably not so much. There are some limitations,
many limitations on the kind of evidence you can present
from a juror about the delibery, the deliberative process that
they went through, and judges in some cases rightfully say
(08:20):
the danger here is that you know any juror may
have a buyer's regret or buyer's remorse, and so we
want to guard the system against that. So I understand.
I don't know if any jurors have said that here.
They may have, but it's not it's not a game
breaker by any means.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Can we talk now about the current court proceedings, what's
going on right now, the heaviest corpus that you raised
in twenty three, and where's it at right now?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Okay? So we file a habeas petition on the brother's behalf,
on both Eric and Lyle's behalf. I remember I was
appointed only to represent Lyle years ago. Now I'm representing
them both in connection with thehaviens that was filed in
May of twenty twenty three. The way the process works
in California State Court is that once ahavior's petition is filed,
(09:16):
the judge has three options. The judge can deny the petition,
the judge can ask the state for what's called an
informal reply, or the judge can issue an order what's
called an order to show cause, which is just a
fancy way of saying the court wants not an informal reply,
but a formal reply, where they have to answer all
the allegations of the petition. The court here took that
(09:37):
second option and said, Okay, you've raised this petition. I
want an informal reply from the state, being represented by
the district attorney that is currently due in late November.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Can ask what are the options for the state.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
The state could say they could raise any number of
procedural defenses. They could say, wait a minute, this is untimely.
You took too long to raise this. They could say,
wait a minute, you filed all these doc I means
years ago, so this is successive. Or they could say,
we're not going to raise proscedural defenses, but we disagree
with you on the merits. We think that your information
(10:16):
isn't sufficient to warrant a new trial. Or they could say, yeah,
we're persuaded. We're going to waive our procedural defenses or
not raise them because we think this is genuinely new
evidence and we're persuaded that it might have led to
a different result, probably would have led to a different result,
and so we're not going to stand in the way
(10:38):
of the court granting relief. So there's a whole range
of options the state has.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Does public interest play into that in any way.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It's a great question. I never worked in a DA's office,
so I don't know. In a way, I hope it doesn't,
at least in a larger perspective, because many of my
cases don't have the public interest in our favor, and
I'd hate to think that the merits of my legal
position or being dictated by whether my client was fortunate
(11:08):
enough to have a Netflix special or a Netflix documentary.
On the other hand, if if that weighs into the
end of the calculus here, I'd certainly be uh be
happy for Eric and while but in the greater scheme
of things, it would be nice to think that the
merits of a claim didn't depend on the existence of
documentaries or dramatic representations that made people sympathetic.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
What's the best case scenario for you and the brothers?
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know, there's another option the DA has that's that's
separate and apart from responding to the habeas petition, and
that's what we have in California. We call it a
resentencing crecy. The DA has full authority to call for
resentencing and sometimes in some cases the judges have power
to call for resentencing in my mind, I think the
(12:04):
the justice of the case and the easiest way to
resolve it in what I consider a fair way. And
I understand there's many das that are not are going
to disagree and think that this isn't the fair way,
But in my position, from my perspective, this case has
always never been about innocence. It's always been about the
level of culpability. I have never believed that Lyle and
(12:25):
Eric were as culpable as cold blooded, premeditated first degree murders.
I think what they did was wrong, and I think
manslaughter is to measure with their culpability level. So to me,
the perfect end of this story, or as perfect as
you can get now, would be for the DA to
(12:45):
call for resentencing and to resentence the brothers to manslaughter.
And I suspect, given the extraordinary amount of time they've served,
that would end up with them being released with time served.
The likelihood, oh boy, A legal question. That's a political one,
(13:07):
and I don't know the answer to it. If I
put aside the politics, and I just I look at
this and I think, what would a fair minded person
do reviewing this evidence. I don't know that you can
look at the combination of things, the combination of Diane
Vandermullen's testimony which was excluded, Lyle's essay which was excluded,
(13:30):
the new letter from Eric to Andy, which talks about
him fearing that his dad is going to come in
any night, and it's happening again, and it's still happening Andy.
And then you look at the fact that at least
one member of Manudo has come forward to say that
Jose Menendez violently raped him as well when he was
a young teenager. I don't know how you can look
(13:52):
at all that and think, okay, that first of the
two questions we talked about, were they abused? That question
has been answered. I don't know how you can look
at this and say, Okay, we'll still argue that there
was no abuse. I think that that ship is saled again.
You may say, okay, there was abuse, but still this
(14:12):
merits and murder conviction. I don't reach that conclusion. I
don't once you accept the premise that this abuse occurred,
it seems to me the appropriate resolutionist a manslaughter conviction.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
On Friday October twenty five, twenty twenty four, the news
that Laarle and Eric had been waiting for was finally
released in a live press conference with the District Attorney
George Gascon.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Okay, good afternoon, everyone, And before I began speaking, I
want to also introduce some other people that are here
with me, and I want to hope I'm pronouncing the
names right, but I have Anamadia Barratsea, Menandez and niece,
Karen Bender, Morlan and Katie's niece. We're all here with us.
(15:06):
Let me begin by telling you that this is a
case where we've had many people in this office spend
a great deal of the time review on the case.
I have to tell you on equivocally that we don't
have a universal agreement. There are people in the office
(15:26):
that strongly believe that the Menana's brothers should stay in
prison the rest of their life, and they do not
believe that they were molested. And there are people in
the office that strongly believe that they should be released
immediately and that they were in fact molested. I have
to tell you that after a very careful review of
(15:50):
all the arguments that were made for people on both
sides of this equation, I came to a place where
I believe that under the law resentencing is appropriate. I
am going to recommend that to a court tomorrow. What
(16:11):
that means in this particular case is that we are
going to recommend to the court that the life without
the possibility of parole be removed and that they would
be sentenced for murder, which, because there are two murders involved,
that will be fifty years to life. However, because of
(16:32):
their age under the law, since they were under twenty
six years of age at the time that the crimes occurred,
they will be eligible for parole immediate. The reason why
I'm here today and why I came in front of
all of you about ten days ago, is because there
(16:54):
was a more recent documentary about the case that again
brought a tremendous amount of public attention, and there have
been other documentary, so this is not the first. This
is the more recent one, and frankly, our office got
flooded with requests for information, and even though this case
(17:18):
was already scheduled to be heard in late November, I
decided to move this forward because quite frankly, we did
not have enough resources to handle all the requests. And
one of the things that I thrived to do in
this office is to be very transparent in everything that
we do. When you look at the case of the
(17:40):
Menendez brothers, you see two very young people. One was
nineteen and the other one was twenty one when they
committed this horrible axe. And I want to underline there
were horrible acts. There is no excuse for murder, and
I will never imply that what we're doing here is
(18:03):
to excuse their behavior, because even if you get abuse,
the right path is to call the police seek help.
But I understand also how sometimes people get desperate. We
often see women, for instance, that have been better for years,
and sometimes they will murder their abuser out of desperation.
(18:28):
And I do believe that the brothers was subjected to
a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home in molestation.
They have been in prison for nearly thirty five years.
I believe that they have paid their debt to society,
(18:50):
and the system provides a vehicle for their case to
be reviewed by a parole boar, and the parole concurs
with my assessment, and it will be their decision. They
will be released accordingly. I must underline, however, this case
(19:14):
will be file in court tomorrow. The final decision will
be made by the judge. Court has to agree with
my conclusion that they deserve to be resentenced. It is
(19:35):
very possible that they may be members of this office
that will be present in court opposing their resentence.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
We're very sure.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Not only that the brothers have rehabilitated and that they
will be saved to be reintegrated in our society, but
that they have paid their dues, not only with the
crimes that they committed, because of all the other things
I have done to improve the life of so many others.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
In the next and final episode of Menendez The Monsters.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Thank you. I'm Mark Gerragis along with Cliff Gardner Alex Kazarian.
We represent Lyle and Eric Menendez.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That would be remissive me not to ask my chances
of chatting with Lyle through you.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Here's what I suggest you do. Is this something that
you want to put on the podcast or something for the.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Few on behalf of the family. I think I speak
for all of them. We thank the DA for what
he did today. These boys need to come home, and
today is a monumental, monumental victory on that path.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Us U
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