A judge in Los Angeles said on Monday that a hearing on whether to resentence the brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez would be pushed back until early next year to give the court and a newly elected district attorney time to review the case.
The hearing, which could lead to the brothers being released after decades in prison, was to be held on Dec. 11; it will now take place on Jan. 30.
“I want the new administration to be able to go through the documents and have a say,” Judge Michael Jesic said on Monday morning at a proceeding in a Los Angeles County courtroom.
The Menendez brothers, convicted in 1996 of killing their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home, had been expected to appear in court on Monday by video call. But the hearing, which lasted about 40 minutes, went on without them because of technical problems with the video connection.
The case of the Menendez brothers grabbed the nation’s attention in the 1990s, the shocking violence and allegations of sexual molestation playing out in a one of the wealthiest enclaves of the country.
The brothers’ trial in 1993 was one of the first to be televised to a national audience, and much of the evidence about sexual abuse within the family was introduced. The brothers were tried together but in front of separate juries, each of which deadlocked. A mistrial was declared.
When the brothers were tried a second time, there were no television cameras in the courtroom, and much of the testimony and evidence about the claims that Jose Menendez, Lyle and Erik’s father, had molested his sons was excluded. The brothers were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. At the time of the murders, Lyle Menendez was 21 and Erik was 18.
The case never fully faded from the culture, and has been the subject of a steady stream of documentaries and dramatized treatments. Two recent productions, a docudrama and a documentary released by Netflix, generated renewed attention and led to a recent decision by George Gascón, the outgoing district attorney of Los Angeles County, to recommend that the brothers be resentenced.
Mr. Gascón, who lost his re-election bid earlier this month, has recommended that the brothers’ sentences be changed to 50 years to life. Because the brothers were under age 26 at the time of the crimes, doing so would make them immediately eligible for parole.
“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” Mr. Gascón said late last month.
The brothers are serving their sentences in a state prison near San Diego.
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