Legislation faculty graduate and felony justice advocate Kim Kardashian has known as on California authorities to rethink the life sentences handed to Erik and Lyle Menendez, the 2 brothers convicted in 1996 of murdering their dad and mom seven years earlier.
“They’re sort, clever and trustworthy males,” Kardashian wrote in a private essay submitted to NBC. The fact star and Skims founder stated the brothers’ actions had been “not excusable” however that their life sentences with out the likelihood for parole are questionable.
“We should always not deny who they’re immediately of their 50s,” Kardashian wrote in her essay. “Physiologically and psychologically, time adjustments us, and I doubt anybody would declare to be the identical particular person they had been at 18. I do know I’m not!
Kardashian’s attraction comes amid renewed curiosity within the Menendez case. Netflix lately started streaming a Ryan Murphy true-crime drama titled Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The streamer can also be releasing its personal documentary on the topic subsequent week.
The brothers have maintained that they killed their dad and mom out of self-defense after enduring a lifetime of bodily, emotional and sexual abuse. Attorneys for the lads argue that below immediately’s understanding of sexual abuse, they might not have been convicted of first-degree homicide.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles introduced on Friday that they’re reviewing new proof within the case.
The Los Angeles county district lawyer, George Gascón, stated throughout a information convention that the guilt of Erik Menendez, 53, and his 56-year-old brother, Lyle Menendez, was not in query, and his workplace was reviewing the case with a view to resentencing.
The brand new proof, Gascón stated, features a letter written by Erik Menendez that his attorneys say corroborates the allegations that he was sexually abused by his father.
The brothers’ lawyer Mark Geragos has stated the household all the time believed they need to have been charged with manslaughter relatively than homicide. However after jury trials – the brothers had been tried individually – led to impasse, jurors in a 3rd trial weren’t supplied a manslaughter choice.
The brothers, 21 and 18 on the time of the murders, admitted they fatally shot their leisure government father, Jose Menendez, and their mom, Kitty Menendez, in 1989. They stated they feared their dad and mom had been about to kill them to stop the disclosure of the daddy’s long-term sexual molestation of Erik.
Prosecutors claimed the murders had been motivated by greed and dedicated as a result of they feared they might be reduce out of their dad and mom’ will. They’d gone on a luxurious spending spree after the murders and earlier than they had been arrested, together with spending half one million {dollars} on garments, Rolex watches and vehicles, a sample of habits richly detailed within the current Netflix drama.
In an announcement on X posted by his spouse, Erik Menendez known as the present a “dishonest portrayal” of what occurred that has taken them again to a time when prosecutors “constructed a story on a perception system that males weren’t sexually abused, and that males expertise rape trauma in another way from ladies”.
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Kardashian wrote in her letter that the “media turned the brothers into monsters and sensationalized eye sweet – two smug, wealthy youngsters from Beverly Hills who killed their dad and mom out of greed. There was no room for empathy, not to mention sympathy.”
Their conviction got here quickly after OJ Simpson’s acquittal, with Kardashian implying, as others have, that Los Angeles prosecutors on the time had no abdomen for a controversial trial final result. Kardashian’s father, Robert Kardashian, was a part of Simpson’s protection workforce, and she or he has spoken of him as her inspiration to review legislation.
Kardashian’s dedication to felony justice reform has helped safe the commutation of a number of prisoners’ sentences. She was concerned in petitioning Donald Trump to signal the 2018 bipartisan First Step Act, designed to cut back extreme sentences within the federal jail system and promote rehabilitation.
The brothers, she wrote, had been “robbed of their childhoods by their dad and mom, then robbed of any probability of freedom by a felony justice system desperate to punish them with out contemplating the context or understanding the ‘why’, and with out caring about whether or not the punishment match the crime, Erik and Lyle had been condemned earlier than the trial even started”.
“I’ve frolicked with Lyle and Erik; they aren’t monsters,” she added. “They’re sort, clever and trustworthy males.”
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