Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón is recommending that Erik and Lyle Menendez be resentenced for the first-degree murders of their parents in 1989. One of his colleagues says this is nothing but a political stunt.
Gascón made his recommendation on Thursday after weeks of speculation that it was coming. While the final decision on the Menendez brothers’ fate will come from a judge, the DA’s recommendation will be considered in the ruling.
Erik and Lyle were originally sentenced to life without parole. But the case has been in the news again following the release of popular documentaries, including a season of Netflix’s “Monsters” in September. Supporters of the Menendez brothers argue that the murders of their parents were justified because they claimed their father sexually abused them.
“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said of the Menendez brothers during a news conference on Thursday.
However, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin says Gascón is only focused on this case to draw attention away from the negative publicity he’s gotten recently.
“George Gascón is in the process of suffering the worst and most humiliating defeat by an elected district attorney in probably the history of the United States,” Lewin told Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt. “He is down 30 points. He has no money. And because of that, what he’s had to do is to try and generate as much publicity as he can.”
Lewin goes on to explain how the day before Gascón announced he was going to have another look at the Menendez case, there was a story in the LA Times discussing how he had refused to prosecute a juvenile double murder suspect, who subsequently went on to murder again.
The deputy DA also mentioned that even if the Menendez brothers were sexually abused by their father as they claimed, it wouldn’t be justification for murder.
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“They executed their parents. Basically blew them apart with shotguns … they ended up spending a bunch of money, and they opened the safe the next morning because they were very worried that there was a will.”
Lewin called the resentencing recommendation a “publicity stunt.”
“George Gascón has 15,000 unfiled cases, including a bunch of sex cases, that he’s not paying attention to at all because they don’t generate publicity. This is a publicity stunt designed to basically bait and switch the electorate.”
The next court date for the Menendez brothers is slated for November 26.
