A judge in Los Angeles rejected a request for a new trial for Erik and Lyle Menendez, closing off another possible path to freedom for the brothers less than a month after they were denied parole.
Judge William C. Ryan of Los Angeles Superior Court denied a petition on Monday that lawyers for the brothers had filed in May 2023. In the filing, the lawyers cited two new pieces of evidence that they argued would have changed the outcome of the brothers’ second trial, at which they were convicted of murdering their parents inside their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
The brothers each had parole hearings in August before a state panel, and both were denied parole. They can petition to go before the board again after 18 months. They can also continue to seek clemency from Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. But their lawyers’ efforts to get them a reduced conviction or a new trial through what is known as a habeas petition have now been turned away.
he first piece of new evidence cited in their petition for a new trial was a letter Erik wrote at age 17 to his cousin Andy Cano, describing years of sexual abuse by his father, Jose Menendez, and Erik’s fear of his father. The second was a declaration by Roy Rossello, a member of the popular boy band Menudo, saying that Mr. Rossello was sexually abused by Jose Menendez in 1983.
The brothers have long maintained that they were sexually abused by their father and feared for their lives when they carried out the murders. In filing the petition, their lawyers argued that the letter and the declaration were relevant to a central question presented at trial: whether the brothers were abused by their father.
Judge Ryan wrote in his 16-page decision rejecting the petition that neither piece of newly discovered evidence was “particularly strong.”
“In sum, the purported new evidence that slightly corroborates that petitioners were sexually abused, does not negate the finding of premeditation and deliberation and the lying-in-wait special circumstance,” the judge wrote, referring to various aspects of the brothers’ convictions. “The evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or supportive of an imperfect self-defense instruction.”
Matt Stevens is a Times reporter who writes about arts and culture from Los Angeles.
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