Prosecutors are calling for Erik and Lyle Menendez to be resentenced for the 1989 murders of their parents

District Attorney believes Erik and Lyle have “paid off their debt.”

Gascón said he made the final decision only an hour before the news conference and that family members were informed of it only a few minutes beforehand.

Despite their life sentences, Gascón said the brothers worked toward reparation and rehabilitation while in prison.

“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” he said.

Not all members of the Menendez family support resentencing. Attorneys for Milton Andersen, Kitty Menendez’s 90-year-old brother, filed a statement of claim asking the court to uphold the brothers’ original sentence. “They shot her mother, Kitty, while reloading to ensure her death,” Andersen’s lawyers said in a statement Thursday. “The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was fair and the sentence fits the heinous crime.”

Although Kitty Menendez has not been accused of abusing her sons, she appears to have facilitated the abuse, according to her sons’ court records. A cousin testified during the brothers’ first trial that Lyle told her he was too scared to sleep in his room because his father came in and touched his genitals. When the cousin told Kitty Menendez, she “angrily dragged Lyle up by his arm,” the petition says.

Another family member testified that no one was allowed to walk down the hallway when Jose Menendez was in the bedroom with one of the boys.

Could an election turn the tide again?

L.A.’s district attorney is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who has blamed recent high-profile murders and rising retail crime on Gascón’s progressive reform policies.

Gascón said Thursday that his office has recommended resentencing about 300 offenders, including people behind bars for murder.

Hochman on Thursday questioned the timing of Gascón’s announcement, which came less than two weeks before the election, calling it a “desperate political move.”

Without access to confidential documents and relevant witnesses, he said he could not form his own opinion on the case.

“If I become prosecutor and the case is still pending at that point, I will conduct a review consistent with the way I would review any case,” Hochman said.

The Menendez case has gained traction in recent weeks after Netflix began airing the true crime drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”

Evidence examined by prosecutors included a letter written by Erik Menendez that his lawyers said corroborated allegations that he was sexually abused by his father.

Roy Rossello, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, also recently came forward and said he was drugged and raped as a teenager in the 1980s by Jose Menendez, the boys’ father.

Menudo was signed by RCA Records, which was then managed by Jose Menendez.

Rossello spoke about his abuse in the 2023 Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.” His claims are part of the evidence detailed in the petition filed last year by the Menendez brothers’ attorney and a calls for a review of her case. Rossello’s claim that he was raped twice by Jose Menendez is part of the Menendez brothers’ petition.

Cristine Soto DeBerry, director of the progressive criminal justice reform organization Prosecutors Alliance, praised Gascón for his decision to support resentencing.

“Our criminal justice system must have mechanisms in place to reconsider extreme sentences when new information is presented to us – particularly evidence of trauma and abuse not previously considered – and when individuals have done the hard work of rehabilitation,” DeBerry said in a statement Explanation .