Menendez brothers are eligible for parole after judge reduces sentences
They are now eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law because they committed the crime under the age of 26.
Erik and Lyle Menendez will have a new shot at freedom after 35 years behind bars for murdering their parents, a judge has ruled.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic reduced the brothers’ sentences from life without parole to 50 years to life.
They are now eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law because they committed the crime under the age of 26.
The state parole board must still decide whether to release them from prison.
“I’m not saying they should be released, it’s not for me to decide,” Mr Jesic said.
“I do believe they’ve done enough in the past 35 years that they should get that chance.”
The brothers did not show any apparent emotion during most of the testimony as they appeared via livestream video, but chuckled when one of their cousins, Diane Hernandez, told the court that Erik Menendez received A+ grades in all of his classes during his most recent semester in college.
The judge said on Tuesday that prosecutors must prove that if released, the brothers still pose a risk of committing a violent crime again.
They were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
The brothers were 18 and 21 at the time of the killings.
While defence lawyers argued the brothers acted out of self-defence after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers killed their parents for a multimillion-dollar inheritance.
