The Menendez Brothers Have Been Resentenced. Here’s What to Know.

A Los Angeles judge resentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez to life with the possibility of parole, which could lead to their freedom after decades in prison.

After several hearings and delays, Lyle and Erik Menendez were resentenced on Tuesday to life with the possibility of parole, moving them a step closer to freedom after more than three decades behind bars for killing their parents.

The decision, by a Los Angeles judge, came after a day of testimony by family members in support of the brothers’ release. The brothers also spoke via video, taking responsibility for their crimes and apologizing to their relatives.

The resentencing, by Judge Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court, now makes the brothers eligible to go before a parole board. A hearing has already been scheduled for next month, under a separate clemency petition being considered by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

The new Los Angeles County district attorney, Nathan J. Hochman, who was elected on promises to take a harder line on crime, had argued against a lighter sentence. Judge Jesic had already rejected multiple requests by Mr. Hochman to withdraw a resentencing petition put forward by Mr. Hochman’s predecessor.

The resentencing effort and clemency petition are the primary legal pathways that could lead to the brothers’ freedom.

It was more than 35 years ago that Lyle and Erik Menendez — then 21 and 18 — walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents, killing them both.

In recent years, Lyle, now 57, and Erik, now 54, have been thrust back into the media spotlight thanks to the revelation of new evidence, an army of social media defenders and a recent TV series and documentary examining the crime and their trials. All of that has led to the hearings this week.

Here’s what else to know about the case.

There were three legal paths being pursued that could have freed the brothers.

The resentencing track was initiated by the former Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, last fall. Separately, the court initiated its own resentencing petition.

The second path was the clemency petition on the desk of Mr. Newsom, who indicated that he supported re-examining the case. The governor had ordered the state’s parole board to assess whether the brothers would pose a threat to public safety if released.

The parole board hearing on the clemency petition is scheduled for June 13. It is not yet clear, with Judge Jesic’s decision on Tuesday, whether the board will consider the brothers’ suitability for parole at the same time.

The third path was a habeas corpus petition filed by the brothers’ lawyers, who claimed that newly unearthed evidence of sexual abuse by Jose Menendez, Lyle and Erik’s father, would have altered the outcome of their trial if it had been available at the time. This was considered the least likely path, and Mr. Hochman, the current district attorney, announced in February that he was opposed to a new trial.

The new district attorney did not support resentencing.

Often, resentencing hearings are not adversarial proceedings because the district attorney’s office has already voiced its support.

In this case, the prosecutors had argued against resentencing the brothers, even though the office, under the previous district attorney, had initiated the process.

In October, Mr. Gascón, when he was still district attorney, asked a judge to resentence the Menendez brothers to a term that would make them eligible for parole.

While acknowledging that the brothers had committed “horrible acts,” Mr. Gascón said he believed they had engaged in “a journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation” while incarcerated. A lawyer for the brothers recently said their rehabilitation had been “exemplary” and highlighted that they had created programs, counseled and mentored others and pursued higher education behind bars.

On April 9, the new district attorney, Mr. Hochman said that prosecutors were prepared to proceed with the court-initiated hearings on resentencing, but his office was asking that Mr. Gascón’s motion be withdrawn. That request was rejected by Judge Jesic.

The brothers had also petitioned the governor to grant them clemency, a bid that Mr. Gascón supported. Mr. Hochman, in his public statements, has stressed that the governor could grant clemency at any time, regardless of what happens with resentencing.

As the brothers made their case to be released, a portrait of their time in prison emerged of siblings who came to be regarded as model inmates.

But Mr. Hochman, a former federal prosecutor, and his team have argued repeatedly that the brothers have not demonstrated that they have “full insight” into their crimes. The brothers, they argue, never renounced their claim that they killed their parents because they feared their parents would kill them first, which prosecutors maintain was a lie.

What were the brothers convicted of?

In 1996, the Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents, Jose, a music executive, and Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by Kitty.

It was their second trial. Two years earlier, a mistrial was declared after two separate juries (one for each brother) deadlocked over a verdict.

The trials proceeded quite differently.

In the first, defense lawyers claimed that the brothers had killed their parents after years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by their father and that they feared for their lives. Their mother, they said, knew about the abuse but didn’t stop it.

Interviews with jurors after the mistrial revealed that some of them questioned how serious the abuse had been and to what extent it justified their actions.

In the second trial, which led to their convictions and in which the brothers were tried in front of a single jury, lawyers for the brothers were limited in what evidence could be presented.

The judge, Stanley M. Weisberg, prohibited their lawyers from using the “abuse excuse,” essentially leaving only two options for jurors: an acquittal or a murder conviction. They went with the latter.

New evidence has emerged in recent years.

Last year, Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, publicly revealed in the Peacock documentary “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” that Jose Menendez had sexually assaulted him at the Menendez family home in New Jersey when he was 14.

The journalist Robert Rand, who had written extensively about the brothers in his book “The Menendez Murders,” also brought forward a letter that Erik wrote when he was 17 to his cousin, detailing his father’s sexual abuse.

In the news conference in October, Mr. Gascón said he believed the brothers’ molestation claims.

Where does the family stand?

Earlier this year, two dozen family members called for the brothers’ resentencing in a letter submitted to the court, arguing that “continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.” They have held several news conferences and other events to rally support for the brothers in the time since.

Not everyone in their family agreed. Milton Andersen, one of Kitty Menendez’s brothers, retained a lawyer to oppose the brothers’ release. In 2023, he told The New York Times that Lyle and Erik “do not deserve to walk on the face of this earth.”

Mr. Andersen died in March.

On Tuesday, in sometimes tearful testimony, the three cousins of Lyle and Erik urged the judge to resentence the brothers and release them immediately, rather than lowering their sentence in a way that would require the parole board to take up the case.

“We believe 35 years is enough,” said Anamaria Baralt, one of the cousins.

Ms. Baralt and the other relatives spoke about the enormous trauma the family has suffered over the years — first, in seeing two family members violently killed, and then in learning that two other family members had committed the crime.

After that came the national media attention and widespread notoriety. “It has been a relentless examination of our family in the public eye,” Ms. Baralt said.

Two Netflix projects have brought renewed attention to the case.

The Menendez brothers were the subject of two high-profile releases on Netflix.

The first, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” an anthology series created by Ryan Murphy, premiered in September.

Weeks later, Netflix premiered “The Menendez Brothers,” a documentary by Alejandro Hartmann featuring exclusive interviews with Lyle and Erik Menendez.

Mr. Gascón previously said that the documentary had “brought a tremendous amount of public attention” and requests for information to his office.

Over the past several years, the Menendez brothers have also been backed by a legion of fans on social media who have examined the case in hindsight and expressed sympathy amid the brothers’ claims of sexual assault.

Reporting was contributed by Kate Christobek, Christine Hauser, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Hank Sanders.