George Gascón’s Re-election Hail Mary: Freeing the Menendez Brothers

On Thursday, Oct. 24, nearly three decades after Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of killing their parents in a salvo of shotgun blasts inside the den of their Beverly Hills mansion, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón announced that he would seek a reduced sentence for the brothers. The decision relates to newly uncovered evidence corroborating their claims that they were sexually abused as children by their father. Their case sat dormant for years but was thrust back into the media spotlight with Monsters, Ryan Murphy's polarizing, massively popular nine-part Netflix series that follows the 1989 killings of José and Kitty Menendez.

For the brothers, now in their 50s, it's a chance at freedom. For Gascón, it's a political Hail Mary to remain L.A.'s top prosecutor — a move that's raised eyebrows considering the criticism that he's soft on crime.

At the press conference announcing the recommendation, Gascón stressed the "tremendous amount of public attention" on the case spurred by new content reexamining the crimes, though he denied speculation he's trying to leverage the newly notorious case for political gain. "There's nothing political about this," the incumbent DA insisted. "We've resentenced over 300 people, including 28 for murder."

Gascón faces long odds in the race. With less than a week before the Nov. 5 election, he trails challenger Nathan Hochman by more than 30 percentage points, according to a survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Enter the Menendez brothers, whose life sentences have come to be seen as reflections of a bygone culture that silenced accusations of sexual abuse, and of a biased criminal justice system that Gascón, a reformist and champion of reducing mass incarceration, has spent his career as a prosecutor taking on. "There was implicit bias at the time that may have had an impact in the way that the case was presented to the jury," Gascón recently told CNN, pointing to comments from one of the original trial prosecutors about "how men cannot be raped."

Some experts believe Gascón is pinning his slim reelection chances on the L.A. County residents who were stirred by Monsters, which shot to the top of Netflix's rankings when it debuted in September. The weeks since the release have seen renewed calls to show the Menendez brothers leniency, offering Gascón a lifeline.

"He thinks that this will help his tiny odds of reelection," says Roy Behr, a consultant to Democratic campaigns in L.A. "He's a smart man who knows his chances are infinitesimal."

Prior to last week's announcement, Gascón said his office was reviewing the convictions. The reexamination was spurred in part by a letter written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano — in 1988, before the killings — corroborating sexual abuse by his father, then president of RCA Records.

That letter was cited last year in a petition from the Menendez brothers, who could immediately be eligible for parole, to review their sentences — long before they reentered the national consciousness as victims of a legal process that overlooked their pleas that they killed their parents in self-defense.

"This conversation wouldn't be taking place if not for it being the October before the election," says Joshua Ritter, a criminal defense attorney who spent nearly a decade at the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. "This habeas petition was filed in May 2023, but it's taken until now for people to talk about it."

Lawyers for Erik and Lyle Menendez are "doing this PR push to put some pressure on a friendly DA," Ritter adds. "It's the perfect storm."

Notably, Gascón has also positioned himself against hardliners within his office who are opposed to freeing the brothers in what could be considered another savvy move, underscoring that he believes survivors of sexual abuse. "There are people that strongly believe that the Menendez brothers should stay in prison the rest of their [lives], and they don't believe they were molested," he said, before adding that they were "subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction and molestation in their home."

Another possibility in Gascón's endorsement for freeing the brothers: The incumbent knows he's going to lose his bid for reelection and is doing what's in his DNA.

Behr says Gascón — essentially a lame duck district attorney absent an eleventh-hour fumble by Hochman — may be "starting to feel a sense of freedom to do what he feels is right. ... It's not like he behaved as if he was constrained by politics," he adds. "Maybe he's thinking to give this case an honest relook, damn the consequences."

There may be tension between national and local sentiment on showing the brothers leniency. L.A. County voters are overwhelmingly concerned about crime. Of the residents who support Hochman, 96 percent report doing so because they believe he will be more effective in fighting violent crime, according to a survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. His backers include Netflix chief Ted Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant, whose mother was murdered in a Beverly Hills home invasion in 2021.

Additionally, there's widespread support for Prop. 36, a November ballot measure that imposes stricter penalties for retail theft, among other things. Most voters are in favor of harsher punishments for repeat offenders.

The upshot: Gascón's advocacy for the brothers may run up against voters' perceptions on crime. But even if that's the case, he has little to lose.

"We're grateful for the district attorney's leadership in putting justice over politics," said Karen VanderMolen, the brothers' cousin, at the Oct. 24 press conference. "We know this wasn't an easy decision, but it was the right one."