Menendez brothers' bid for new trial rejected despite fresh evidence

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Superior Court judge rejected a bid by Erik and Lyle Menendez to obtain a new trial for murdering their parents in 1989, despite the existence of two new pieces of evidence that added weight to the assertion that their father sexually abused them.

“Neither piece of newly discovered evidence is particularly strong,” wrote Judge William Ryan in his Monday ruling. “Neither piece of evidence adds to the allegations of abuse that the jury already considered, yet found that the brothers planned, then executed that plan, to kill their abusive father and compliant mother.”

Erik Menendez, 54, and his older brother Lyle, 57, were first tried in 1993 with separate juries, both of which couldn’t reach a verdict. During the 1996 retrial, the judge limited evidence that their father, Jose Menendez, was abusive, and ruled that the defense had failed to demonstrate the brothers were in imminent danger before the murder. The jury ultimately convicted both brothers of first-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison without parole. The convictions were later upheld on appeal.

In 2023, the brothers filed a writ of habeas corpus, asking for their convictions to be thrown out based on two new pieces of evidence that had recently come to light. A former member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rossello, revealed in 2023 that Jose, a record executive, drugged and raped him when he was 14 years old. The second piece of evidence was a 1998 letter purportedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin, Andy Cano, in which he refers to the sexual abuse less than a year before the killings: “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”

“The new evidence not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that — in fact — he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988,” the brothers wrote in their petition.

Members of the Menendez family had also convinced then-District Attorney George Gascón to file a motion to have the brothers be resentenced. In May, a judge agreed to that motion — over the objection of new District Attorney Nathan Hochman — and resentenced the brothers to life in prison with** the possibility of parole.

Both brothers had their first parole hearings last month and were denied early release. A parole commissioner told Lyle that he still struggles with “antisocial personality traits like deception, minimization and rule breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.” Another said that Erik continues “to pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.”

The habeas petition had a somewhat higher bar. The key question for the judge was whether or not the brothers acted with “premeditation and deliberation.” If they did, it was first-degree murder.

“Assuming, without deciding, that the Cano letter and Rossello declaration have been presented timely and are admissible, material and credible, the court finds that these two pieces of evidence presented here would not have resulted in a hung jury, nor in the conviction of a lesser instructed offense,” Ryan wrote.

The evidence showed that Jose was abusive, and that he abused Erik. But other testimony at the trial had shown that as well, Ryan found, but doesn’t say anything about the brothers’ state of mind shortly before the killings.

“Petitioners have not demonstrated that the trial court would have actually admitted the Cano letter and Rossello declaration after excluding much of the sex abuse evidence from the first trial, based on the cumulative and foundational issues,” the judge wrote. “What is more, the introduction of either of these two pieces of evidence would not have resulted in the trial court giving an imperfect self-defense instruction because neither demonstrate the brothers experienced a fear of imminent peril.”

The brothers’ attorney declined to comment on the ruling.

“Judge Ryan has put the full kibosh on the habeas motion here,” Hochman said at a press conference on Tuesday. “He basically said that the evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror. That is how deficient, how meritless, how baseless the evidence that has been presented by the Menendez brothers has been in this habeas motion.”

The brothers can appeal the ruling, as well as their parole denials.

Follow @hillelaron