Menendez brothers have sentenced reduced to 50 years in prison opening possibility for parole

Erik and Lyle Menendez are eligible for parole 35 years aft they were imprisoned for murdering some of their parents.

The brothers appeared in Los Angeles County Superior Court connected Tuesday, wherever Judge Michael Jesic reduced their sentences from beingness without parole to 50 years to life.

This alteration means they're present eligible for parole nether California's youthful offender instrumentality due to the fact that they committed the crime nether the property of 26. 

The brothers were ordered successful 1996 to spend the remainder of their lives successful situation for fatally shooting their amusement enforcement father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, successful their Beverly Hills home.

The brothers were 18 and 21 astatine the clip of the killings.

Defense attorneys argued the brothers acted retired of self-defense aft years of intersexual maltreatment by their father, portion prosecutors said the brothers killed their parents for a multimillion-dollar inheritance.

The authorities parole committee indispensable inactive determine whether to merchandise them from prison. 

'I'm not saying they should beryllium released, it's not for maine to decide,' Jesic said. 'I bash judge they've done capable successful the past 35 years, that they should get that chance.' 

The brothers are broadly supported by their relatives, galore of whom testified connected their behalf connected Tuesday.

'Today, 35 years later, I americium profoundly ashamed of who I was,' Lyle told the court. 

The defence began by calling Ana Maria Baralt, a relative of Erik and Lyle, who testified that the brothers person repeatedly expressed remorse for their actions.

'We all, connected some sides of the family, judge that 35 years is enough,' Baralt said. 'They are universally forgiven by our family.'

Another cousin, Tamara Goodell, said she had precocious taken her 13-year-old lad to conscionable the brothers successful prison, and that they would lend a batch of bully to the satellite if released.

Hernandez, who besides testified during Erik and Lyle's archetypal trial, spoke astir the maltreatment she witnessed successful the Menendez household erstwhile she lived with them and the alleged 'hallway rule.'

'When Jose was with 1 of the boys … you couldn't adjacent spell up the stairs to beryllium connected the aforesaid floor,' Hernandez said of the father.

The erstwhile LA County District Attorney George Gascón had opened the doorway to imaginable state for the brothers past autumn by asking a justice to trim their sentences. 

His bureau said the lawsuit would’ve been handled otherwise contiguous owed to modern understandings of intersexual maltreatment and trauma, and the brothers’ rehabilitation implicit 3 decades successful prison.

A resentencing petition laid retired by Gascón focuses connected the brothers’ accomplishments and rehabilitation.

Since their conviction, the brothers person gotten an education, participated successful self-help classes and started assorted enactment groups for their chap inmates.