Potentially reopening one of Southern California’s most notorious murder cases, attorneys for Erik and Lyle Menendez filed court papers Wednesday contending that newly surfaced evidence warrants the overturning of the brothers’ convictions for killing their parents in 1989.
Jose Menendez and his wife, Mary Louise, or “Kitty,” were gunned down by their sons in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. Erik Menendez, now 52, and Lyle Menendez, now 55, never denied carrying out the killings, but contended they were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their father and feared for their lives.
As a result, defense attorneys argued that the brothers “did not harbor the mental state needed for first-degree murder and were therefore guilty of manslaughter.”
Prosecutors, however, said the killings were financially motivated, pointing to lavish spending sprees by the brothers after the killings and arguing they were guilty of first-degree murder.
The brothers’ first trial ended with jurors unable to reach verdicts, deadlocking between first-degree murder and lesser charges including manslaughter. The second trial, which began in October 1995 and lacked much of the testimony centered on allegations of sexual abuse by Jose Menendez, ended with both brothers being convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy.
The brothers were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They have repeatedly appealed their convictions to no avail.
But in court papers filed Wednesday — and first obtained by Los Angeles Magazine — attorneys for the brothers point to two new pieces of evidence they contend corroborate the brothers’ allegations of long-term sexual abuse — a letter written by Erik Menendez to one of his cousins in early 1989, eight months before the August 1989 killings, and recent allegations by a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo that he was also sexually abused by Jose Menendez as a teenager.
The court document…
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