Menendez brothers prosecutor announces resentencing decision

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Los Angeles DA recommends resentencing for Menendez brothers

 Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon announces the decision on the notorious Menendez brothers case.

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Los Angeles’ top cop says he has reached a decision to seek a reduced sentence for the Menendez brothers.

“After very careful review of all the arguments…I came to a place where I believe that, under the law, resentencing is appropriate, and I am going to recommend that to a court tomorrow,” District Attorney George Gascon told reporters Thursday afternoon.

He said he will recommend a sentence of 50 years to life for each of the brothers, which would make them immediately eligible for parole under state law because they were under 26 at the time of the murders.

Erik and Joseph “Lyle” Menendez ambushed their parents with shotguns in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.

Their first trial ended in a mistrial. They were both convicted after their second trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, under a new California law, district attorneys have the authority to request new sentences that were handed down before they took office.

LETTER AT CENTER OF MENENDEZ BROTHERS’ BID FOR FREEDOM CALLED INTO QUESTION

Erik Menendez (C) and his brother Lyle (L) are pictured on Aug. 12, 1991 in Beverly Hills.  (MIKE NELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

“They have been in prison for nearly 35 years,” Gascon said. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”

He added that a resentencing must be approved by the court before it becomes official and that a parole board will still need to sign off on their eventual release. He went on to praise the brothers’ good behavior during their decades behind bars.

The brothers and their supporters, including two dozen relatives, among them their mother’s sister Joan Andersen VanderMolen, petitioned Gascon for a resentencing earlier this year, arguing that new evidence shows the brothers were sexually abused and molested by their father.

The new evidence includes allegations made public last year that their father also molested Roy Rossello, a former member of the boy band Menudo, in the 1980s, and a letter that Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, which surfaced in 2015, years after the latter’s death.

Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez are serving life sentences after being convicted of killing their parents. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Associated Press)

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The date the letter was written has been challenged by critics of the brothers’ potential release. The defense said he sent it to his cousin eight months before the murders, when the brothers were 21 and 18. The Menendez brothers are now both in their 50s.

Gascon is up for reelection in less than two weeks and faces a strong challenge from independent candidate Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor. Critics have called his involvement in the high-profile case politically motivated. But there is also some public support for the brothers’ release after a series of recent documentaries attracted attention to their case, including one on FOX Nation.

WATCH ON FOX NATION: MENENDEZ BROTHERS: VICTIMS OR VILLAINS?

The brothers unloaded shotguns at their father, former RCA Records executive Jose Menendez, and their mother, Mary “Kitty” Menendez, while the couple was watching TV at 10:30 p.m.

They ran out of shells and had to go outside to get more in order to finish off their mother, who investigators said had blood on the bottom of her shoes, indicating that she tried to escape after the shooting began.

An undated photo of the Menendez family as it appears on screen during a panel at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday, June 2. The brothers Lyle and Erik were convicted of fatally shooting both of their parents in 1989.  (Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)

Not all of the brothers’ family members support their release.

Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, 90, vehemently opposes a reduced sentence and on Wednesday asked the judge overseeing the case to keep his nephews in prison for the rest of their lives – as they were sentenced originally.

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“It’s Milton Andersen’s continued belief that the claims of molestation were made up, and they were false, and he believes that the correct verdict was issued by the jury and the correct sentence was also committed,” his attorney Kathleen Cady told Fox News Digital.

This is a breaking news story.