Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story!
This article contains discussions of murder and sexual abuse surrounding the real life and crimes of Erik and Lyle Menendez.
With the duo’s story getting fresh life on the Netflix show, attorney Mark Geragos weighs in on the Menendez brothers’ chances of a prison release after Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The second installment in Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology follows the titular brothers from murdering their parents in 1989 through their court trial, in which they cited sexual and emotional abuse from their parents as the reason behind the murders. Monsters season 2 ends with the duo receiving life sentences without the possibility of parole in 1996, where they still are 28 years later.
On the heels of the show’s premiere, PEOPLE spoke with the brothers’ post-conviction attorney Mark Geragos to discuss how Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will impact their chances at getting a prison release. This also comes after a Habeus Corpus petition was made to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in May 2023 after the discovery of new evidence of sexual abuse allegations from former Menudo member Roy Rosselló against Jose, who he says raped him in the ’80s, and a letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano, in which he described his father’s sexual abuse, months before the murders.
Geragos says that part of the reason the letter was not discovered sooner was that “nobody had looked at [the cousin’s personal] effects until 2015“, and as such it wasn’t found until “10 years after our last appeal“, and that his team’s new defense approach is on the ground that “the second trial did not comport with constitutional protections for a variety of reasons“:
We’re saying the second trial did not comport with constitutional protections for a variety of reasons. And a Habeas [Corpus petition] has new evidence. It requires new evidence because this case had basically been moribund for close to 17 years. And the new evidence was the Menudo accuser and the letter that Andy Cano wrote or received from Erik eight months before the killing.
In looking at what this means for the brothers’ future, Geragos says there are now “three things” the judge can choose to do with the petition, though says he ultimately issued an order for the DA to informally respond, “which they have taken very seriously over the last 15 months“. He also says that the defense team has conducted a conditional examination of Kitty’s older sister, and provided statements from 24 family members who “have all asked that they be resentenced, presented a number of other documents and evidence for them to take a look at and consider while making a decision“:
The judge can do basically three things. The judge can deny it, the judge can order the DA to respond, or the judge can do what he did, which was issue an order for the DA to informally respond, which they have taken very seriously over the last 15 months because we’ve presented evidence to them.
When asked about the brothers’ feelings on the new petition, Geragos says the Menendezes are “cautiously optimistic“, while also feeling that the trial would have seen a very different outcome if it occurred today:
I tried this case today, 99 times out of 100, it’s a voluntary manslaughter. Twenty years, 30 years, the culture moves, and I think more enlightened or evolved, and people start to realize that maybe there was a feeding frenzy at the time, and on a more sober reflection, that they didn’t get a fair trial.
Despite his optimism, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office says they are “investigating the claims submitted in the petition“, and that the informal response is due on September 26. Both former LA senior deputy district attorney Dmitry Gorin and defense attorney Neama Rahmani were also asked about their thoughts on the brothers’ chances of release, and neither feels the new evidence will benefit their appeal, with the latter calling it a “Hail Mary-type argument“:
Dmitry Gorin
: I don’t know how much this new evidence moves the needle. It’s still very much a long shot because of the history of the case, because of the prior trial rulings and because materially, this doesn’t really change the evidence in the case. It’s more of the same. It’s horrible evidence. It’s tragic they were abused, but it’s more of the same.
Neama Rahmani
: It’s a Hail Mary type argument. This isn’t enough, in my opinion. A corroborating note or the fact that a victim abused someone else, this is not the type of evidence that typically results in a habeas petition being granted.
What This Means For The Menendez Brothers’ Release Chances
It Does Seem The Show’s Release Won’t Help Much
Though the petition may have come a little over a year before the show’s release, it does seem clear that Geragos and his clients are hoping that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story‘s premiere will create new awareness and support for their story. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a true-crime project led to developments in widely publicized cases, one of the more notable being HBO’s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, in which the titular real estate heir inadvertently confessed to the murders he had previously been accused of, and was subsequently arrested and convicted.
The Jinx
would later get a second season covering the eight years between Durst’s arrest ahead of season 1’s premiere and its 2024 premiere, featuring phone calls from Durst while in prison and interviews with new people attached to the case.
However, in spite of Geragos and the Menendez brothers’ hopes, the fact that both the LAC DA’s office has yet to make an informal response, it may point toward Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story not being enough to get the brothers out of prison. While Gorin and Rahmani do at least note that it’s a “long shot” rather than an absolute uncertainty, the evidence being presented does seem to largely fall in line with the brothers’ previous defense stances, making it unlikely that a new trial would be granted.
Our Take On The Menendez Brothers’ Chances Of Being Released
Murphy’s Netflix Show Did Little to Give Them A Meaningful Defense
A 20-plus-year-old court case being revisited is certainly not unheard of, nor does the passage of time necessarily mean that anyone’s chances at overturning a prior conviction are completely zero. Again looking at the true crime genre, both the investigative journalism podcast Into the Dark and the 2020 documentary Who Killed Malcolm X? successfully found new evidence in the cases of Curtis Flowers and the murder of the iconic Civil Rights activist that led to the releases of the latter and two men accused of being involved in Malcolm X’s assassination.
Even still, I do believe that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story won’t be enough to convince either a court or the DA office to properly conduct a new trial to potentially overturn the brothers’ life sentences. Erik Menendez recently came out with a sharply critical letter about the show’s “inaccurate” portrayal of him and his brother, with critics also agreeing that the show is a muddled mess of inconsistent tones and depictions of its titular figures. With even audiences turning against the show in comparison to their positive response to its Jeffrey Dahmer-focused first season, Monsters may have done more harm than good.
Source: PEOPLE
