The Brief

More than a dozen family members of the Menendez brothers gathered outside the downtown Los Angeles criminal courts building Wednesday and called for the resentencing and early release of the two convicted killers.

The show of support for Lyle and Erik Menendez follows a decision announced earlier this month by L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón to review their murder case. The brothers have long said they were sexually abused by their father.

Anamaria Baralt, a cousin of the brothers, introduced a coalition called "Justice for Erik and Lyle" and described the brothers as victims of a system that would not hear them and a culture that was not ready to listen.

"They would be mocked," Baralt said. "They would be called cold-blooded killers, left to rot in jail and denied any hope of redemption.

"If Lyle and Erik's case were heard today, with the understanding we now have about abuse and PTSD, there is no doubt in my mind that their sentencing would have been very different."

Erik Menendez (left) is shown in 2016 and Lyle Menendez in 2018 in photos provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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Joan Andersen VanderMolen, an aunt of the Menendez brothers, said she struggled for years to come to terms with what happened to her sister's family. She called it a nightmare none of the family members could imagine.

"But as details of Lyle and Eric's abuse came to light, it became clear," she continued, "that their actions while tragic were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable [cruelty] of their father."

The brothers were convicted of first-degree murder in the 1989 shooting deaths their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home. The case, which led to two highly publicized trials, has remained in the public consciousness for decades, and has recently drawn attention from a new generation on TikTok and other social media platforms.

Gascón has said new evidence was revealed in a recent Netflix documentary on the brothers, who have been imprisoned for more than 30 years.

Lyle Menendez is now 56 years old. Erik Menendez is now 53.

New evidence

One piece of evidence in question is a letter written by Erik Menendez to a cousin eight months before the murders, and it detailed sexual abuse by Menendez’s father, the district attorney said. The letter was found nine years ago, after the cousin’s death.

It could help provide a basis to reduce the conviction from murder to voluntary manslaughter because it may allow the brothers to claim the killings happened under a legal theory known as imperfect self defense. Under that argument, they would be able to claim they had the honest but unreasonable belief that their actions were necessary to protect themselves.

“None of this information has been confirmed,” Gascón said last month. “We are not at this point ready to say that we either believe or do not believe that information but we are here to tell you that we have a moral and ethical obligation to review what has been presented to us.”

The Netflix documentary recounts the August 1989 killings of Jose and Kitty Menendez, both of whom were hit with multiple shotgun rounds, and details how sexual abuse of boys was not as recognized as sexual abuse of girls at the time of the Menendez trial in the early 1990s.

"If they were the Menendez sisters, they would not be in custody," defense attorney Mark Geragos said Wednesday afternoon at the news conference.

Geragos also said a former member of the 1980s boy band Menudo has signed a declaration stating he was molested by the brother's father, Jose Menendez, who was then-head of RCA records and signed a deal with the band.

An L.A. County Superior Court hearing is scheduled for Nov. 26.

In a statement released after the news conference, the District Attorney's Office said a habeas filing is being handled by the office’s Writs and Appeals Division, which would have to be considered by the court. The case is also being reviewed by the office’s Resentencing Unit.

"We have heard the heartfelt pleas from the Menendez family regarding a review of this case," the statement read. "While we cannot formally comment on any decisions at this time, please know that our office is dedicated to a thorough and fair process and is exploring every avenue available to our office to ensure justice is served."

Background on the case

The case became an international sensation in part because Court TV broadcast live the first trial of the Menendez brothers in 1993. It ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked.

Defense lawyers for the brothers argued that the killings were motivated by years of abuse. But prosecutors raised doubts that the abuse ever happened. They argued instead that the brothers were motivated by greed and money.

Jose Menendez’s estate was worth nearly $15 million at the time of his death.

“They are not the villains they’ve been portrayed as,” said Brian A. Andersen Jr., a nephew of Kitty Menendez, at the Wednesday news conference. “They were boys young and scared and abused by their father in ways no child should ever experience.”

Andersen said the Menendez brothers tried to protect themselves “the only way they knew.”

Prosecutors in the second trial said their motive was greed and money.

Jose Menendez’ estate was worth nearly $15 million at the time of his death.

During a second trial, a judge limited the claims of sexual abuse and barred the brothers from arguing imperfect self defense. Both were convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

After speaking with reporters on Wednesday, some of the relatives and their attorneys walked across the street to the Hall of Justice to meet with members of Gascón’s resentencing unit.

Geragos, who represents the Melendez brothers, said they are hoping either for resentencing or for the brothers’ convictions to be overturned. In any case, the family wants them released immediately.

The defense attorney said the brothers have been model prisoners, mentoring other inmates. He noted Lyle Menendez graduated from college behind bars. “So there is an idea of redemption,” he said.

The case has garnered renewed attention in the wake of the release of a Netflix documentary and a true crime drama on the case. And there's a movement on TikTok to free the brothers.

Some people have accused Gascón of taking up the case to gain publicity for himself as he faces a tough reelection bid. The relatives of the Menendez brothers who spoke Wednesday said they wanted to take politics out of their request.

“For us, this is not a political issue,” Baralt said. “This is about truth, justice and healing.”

The District Attorney's Office said it would provide updates about its review of the case as soon as new information becomes available.

A Van Nuys high school senior in federal immigration detention since August has been released to his family.

Men claiming to be immigration agents arrested Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz while he walked the family dog in Van Nuys on Aug. 8. The 18-year-old was held in San Bernardino County’s Adelanto Detention Facility and at one point transferred to a facility in Arizona without his family’s knowledge.

U.S. Rep. Luz Rivas announced the update about Guerrero-Cruz on the House floor Thursday morning.

“My heart goes out to his family, especially his mother, who can hold her son again after months of fear and uncertainty at the hands of ICE,” Rivas said. “I’m glad that Benjamin is home, and I hope he and his family can begin the healing process.”

It was not immediately clear if there were further conditions of his release.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official previously told LAist in a statement that the Chilean teen overstayed a tourist visa and was required to leave the U.S. in 2023.

Between June and October, federal authorities have arrested more than 7,100 undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area, the Department of Homeland Security told the L.A. Times. LAist has requested updated numbers.

A recent survey of high school principals across the country found that since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, there has been widespread concern among students from immigrant families, which has contributed to school absences, bullying and harassment.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Bel-Air, the dramatic reimagining of the beloved ‘90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, aired its series finale this week.

Inspired by a 2019 trailer written and directed by Morgan Cooper, Bel-Air premiered on Peacock in 2022 with Cooper as showrunner and Fresh Prince star Will Smith among the executive producers. It ran for four seasons, making it the streamer’s longest-running original series, and brought several of the original sitcom’s cast members back in new guest roles (and one old one).

Carla Banks-Waddles (Good Girls, That’s So Raven) joined Bel-Air as showrunner in its second season and won an NAACP Image Award for her writing on the show.

She spoke with LAist host Julia Paskin about how the series paid homage to its source material and put the real Los Angeles more front and center than the original series was able to.

On doing The Fresh Prince justice and not letting it be a constraint

“We feel the responsibility and the weight of what this IP is for people,” Banks-Waddles says. “Because it’s this beloved show. And it was beloved to all of us [writers] too. So I think we feel the weight. We wanna honor the original, we don't want to disrespect it, but we also kind of have to pick it up and put it aside and go, ‘OK, but how do we make Bel-Air stand on its own?'”

Jabari Banks and Olly Sholotan in a scene from the final season of "Bel-Air."

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For fans of the original series, Bel-Air included plenty of nods to beloved storylines and moments (like Carlton and Will dancing to “Apache (Jump On It)” by The Sugarhill Gang, which happens in the final season).

But even for people not familiar with The Fresh Prince, Banks-Waddles says, “You can still come to [Bel-Air] and go, ‘I love this.’ So I think it's just finding that balance of feeling the responsibility but then filing it away and saying, ‘But this is its own show.’ [...] And just having fun with it and telling the stories that we wanna tell, that feel important, that feel fun, that feel meaningful.”

But figuring out how to wrap up the series also brought new pressures.

“So many times you stay with a show 'til the end, and then you're let down by a finale,” Banks-Waddles says, “and I just did feel the responsibility of fans who were skeptics in the beginning who did tune in and understand, ‘Oh, this is different. I'm gonna watch it and support it, and I like it.’ And they stayed on the ride with us. So I want this to feel like a thank-you to everybody who stuck with us.”

Ultimately, Banks-Waddles says she wanted the audience to feel like the finale was less of an ending and more of a sendoff for the characters, hence the last episode’s title, “The Next Act.”

“Even though it feels like a goodbye, I do want people to think even though I'm not gonna be with the Banks family in their next act and what they're going off to, that you're gonna feel joy and hope for all of them.”

Bringing back original cast members

Over the course of four seasons, Bel-Air brought back several original cast members of The Fresh Prince and cast them in new roles — including Tatyana Ali who played younger sister Ashley Banks, Joseph Marcell who played the Banks family butler Geoffrey, and this season, Will’s original Aunt Viv, actress Janet Hubert.

Actress Janet Hubert in a scene from the final season of "Bel-Air."

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Hubert left the original show amid conflict with Will Smith and was recast, but in recent years, she publicly reconciled with Smith.

The fact that Hubert was on board with taking on a role in the final season, Banks-Waddles says, “felt poetic.”

The most important part, she says, was always to make the cameos feel organic and purposeful, “not  forced or too gimmicky.”

Los Angeles plays itself

Unlike The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which filmed entirely on soundstages in front of a studio audience, Bel-Air had more freedom to film in different L.A. locations.

Set in Bel-Air (though the Banks home in the series actually was in the city of Bradbury), the show also spends a lot of time in South L.A.

Banks-Waddles says the initial thinking was that because Will is from West Philadelphia, he would feel an affinity for South L.A., where his friend Jazz lives. And it also opened up more storytelling possibilities: “Like the gentrification of South L.A. ... the [SoFi] stadium coming and just how neighborhoods are changing and how it's impacting that community.”

The state of Black TV

Asked about studios and streamers backsliding on investments in content created by and about people of color, Banks-Waddles says she has felt a marked difference today compared to four or five years ago, when it felt like more doors were opening.

Now, she says, “I know there is a feeling that those doors are narrowing and that our time has maybe passed. But I also think a part of it is just the industry and that we see it ebb and flow. We see sometimes we're hot, sometimes we're not. But I like to believe that good storytelling is here to stay, and that includes our stories.”

For the full interview with Carla Banks-Waddles, click here.

It was one of the higher-profile lawsuits against the city of L.A. over the past year.

Two brothers in their 70s said they suffered serious injuries — including fractured skulls and spines — from a speeding LAPD officer crashing into the side of their car at 55 mph.

An investigator for the police department determined the officer was at fault for driving at an unsafe speed.

The city ultimately settled in the middle of the trial this September for $18 million.

It’s one of the city’s most expensive lawsuit settlements over the past few years, at a time the city has cut services due to a fiscal crisis driven largely by sharply rising legal payouts.

An accusation in the case, however, has gone unreported. Days before settling the case, lawyers for the plaintiffs accused L.A.’s elected city attorney of an ethics breach.

As the case was about to go to trial, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto called an expert witness for the plaintiffs, “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

At the time of her Aug. 16 call, the expert witness — a neurosurgeon named Andrew Fox — was on the official witness list for the upcoming trial and had been deposed by the city’s attorneys.

According to a filing by the plaintiffs, Feldstein Soto made the call while the city owed Fox $5,000 to $6,000 in overdue deposition fees for the time the city spent questioning him before trial.

By asking for a campaign donation from a testifying expert, Glassman alleged Feldstein Soto violated a state ethics rule for attorneys, which he wrote “forbids interfering with any party’s orderly access to a witness’ testimony.”

“Through her ex parte communications and political solicitation designed to privately cultivate favor with plaintiffs’ retained expert, she attempted to compromise plaintiffs’ access to Dr. Fox’s accurate and unbiased testimony,” Glassman wrote in his Sept. 5 filing disclosing the call to the court.

“It placed Dr. Fox in an untenable bind, where any given response to her overtures invites pressure and a sense of obligation,” he added.

The city attorney’s conduct, he alleged, was “improper and corrosive to the integrity of this trial.”

Five days after Grossman’s accusations, Feldstein Soto’s office recommended the city settle. The $18 million settlement — handled by her second-in-command — was finalized before Fox was scheduled to take the witness stand in the trial.

Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request through her spokesperson, Karen Richardson.

In an emailed response to questions, Richardson said the settlement “had nothing to do with Dr. Fox” and “was a product of balancing comparative negligence with the amount and payment terms upon which the agreement was reached.”

Her campaign manager, Robb Korinke, told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call. He said Feldstein Soto did not know Fox had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

“Hydee had no awareness of his involvement in the case,” Korinke said. “He didn’t disclose that he was involved in this case, nor did he donate.”

How did he end up on the call list?

Feldstein Soto called Fox because he was a donor to other campaigns in the county, Korinke told LAist.

While Fox does not appear in searches of city and county campaign contribution databases, Korinke provided LAist with an image of a fundraiser invite for Nathan Hochman — when he was running for district attorney — that listed Fox and his wife as co-hosts. Fox did not respond to multiple phone messages for comment left with receptionists at his office.

Asked if Feldstein Soto’s campaign checked whether people she was going to ask for donations had pending matters before the city attorney’s office so they could be screened out, Korinke said he couldn’t speak to that because he’s not the fundraiser.

“Obviously, if Hydee recognizes someone she knows, she wouldn’t call them, but I don’t know what additional vetting they may have,” he said. “She has no intention of knowingly contacting anyone that would have such a conflict.”

Retired Judge Jeremy Fogel said the city attorney’s phone call would not be something the State Bar would follow up on for an ethics review if — as her campaign manager said — she did not know Fox was an expert witness in the case, and thus, it sounds like there was no intentional wrongdoing.

But, he said, it raises the question of whether she or her team should be doing conflict checks before asking for campaign money.

“It’s not a bad idea” to run checks before soliciting money, said Fogel, who was on the state and federal bench for more than three decades and now leads the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley’s law school.

“When you have the resources we have now within information, you could probably find it in an electronic database. It might not be an undue burden,” Fogel said.

Nowadays, he said, software exists that helps flag potential conflicts based on comparing lists of names.

“It’s just saying you’ve got a case, here’s the witness list, and if you’re going to solicit money, you should at least run a comparison so that you’re not inadvertently soliciting somebody who's on the other team. It would certainly be a good practice,” Fogel said.

When serving as a mediation judge, Fogel said, he would do a conflict check to make sure he wasn’t handling a case where he knew one of the witnesses.

Past controversies

Brought into office by voters in late 2022, Feldstein Soto runs the largest elected city attorney’s office in the country. More than 500 attorneys work under her.

In addition to serving as the city’s top lawyer — representing the city in lawsuits and giving legal advice to city leaders — the city attorney also is in charge of prosecuting misdemeanor crimes within city boundaries.

Feldstein Soto has been the focus of past controversies.

In 2023, she picked a major campaign donor with a problematic history to lead a major homeless housing provider without noting her campaign money connection.

Months later, Feldstein Soto said the man she put in charge failed to make progress in fixing serious safety problems, failed to hire enough staff and wrongfully told 451 tenants they’d be evicted.

Feldstein Soto ultimately said she made a mistake recommending him and acknowledged not fully vetting his background.

In high-profile proceedings she observed in a homelessness lawsuit, Feldstein Soto allowed the city to incur over $3 million in outside lawyer bills without telling the city council, despite the council authorizing just $900,000 for it. That prompted public frustration from some council members.

In September, a longtime city prosecutor alleged in a sworn declaration that Feldstein Soto unlawfully demanded the dismissal of a case because the defendant was represented by a friend and maximum campaign donor. A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto has said the allegations are untrue.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Wayne, his partner and son sift through their storage unit in Los Angeles.

Since they lost their apartment in June, they’ve kept the belongings of their old one-bedroom unit neatly stored in a 10-by-10-foot space — bins of clothing, a refrigerator, a mattress. Their 4-year-old, A, plays with a wooden activity cube, a familiar toy he hasn’t played with in a while. (We’re using Wayne’s first name and A’s first initial only to protect their family’s privacy.)

That night, they’ll start driving east — to a new home.

“There's nothing here for us to be around. The faster we get on the road, the faster we can get to a new life that actually has some potential,” Wayne said.

Unable to find shelter resources in L.A., Wayne and his family have been living in their car. After LAist reported on Wayne’s story, he received a couple donations — enough to get a new rental out of state in the Midwest, where he had a job offer. They got the U-Haul right away.

Before they left, a case worker from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority gave them gift cards for $60 dollars worth of groceries, he said. (LAHSA reached out to LAist after the story aired.)

‘We’re willing to give up California’

Wayne’s family lost their apartment at a time when the homeless services system in L.A. County has been strained. The county is facing cuts to housing services, driven in part by a drop in federal and state funding. And earlier this year, LAHSA circulated a memo about dwindling capacity for family housing. Meanwhile, the number of people experiencing homelessness in families with children has been on the rise.

“ In L.A., it feels like we're swimming against a current,” Wayne said. He was laid off from his job last year. While Wayne grew up here and doesn’t agree with the politics of the state he’s moving to, he said he was running out of options.

“We're willing to give California up for that because the most important thing is to be housed and fed. So, it's like a bittersweet feeling of like, damn, we're gonna go to a place where we know nothing, we know no one, we have no connections,” he said.

Wayne's son, A, slept for 15 hours straight in his new home. "He just wants to take in – the stability of being inside," Wayne said.

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In his new state, he’s renting a 3-bedroom house with a yard for $1,000/month. The average cost of a one-bedroom unit is around $2,100 in L.A, and in order to afford it — workers need to make at least $40 an hour, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Having to live in his car with his 4-year-old, he said, was “soul-crushing.”

His partner, who wanted to be identified by her first initial, E., said they had even contemplated giving their son up for adoption.

“This was terrible. We feel absolutely horrible having our child out here like this,” she said. “ We got so frustrated some nights that he wouldn't sleep in the car that we would just all sit there crying. The first night, he got a pretty bad rash on him, like, all over his body. And then, not being able to wash him as often is just ... it breaks my heart.”

Settling into their new home

After packing up their things that Wednesday night, they made it to Victorville before calling it a day. Over the next week, they drove out in their U-Haul — getting winter clothes on Black Friday at a Carter’s for their son on the way. They moved into their new home last week.

A ran into every room, exploring.

“He was kind of standing there for a bit, just kind of blank stare, and then I told him, ‘It's our home,’ and he smiled,” Wayne said.

He said the exhaustion of having to live in their car has caught up with all of them — A slept for 15 hours straight on his old mattress on the floor.

They’re all still getting used to the winter weather.

“We unloaded the fridge from the truck, and I slipped literally on the ice outside, but I was telling them, ‘Welcome to the Midwest.’”

But he said they’re warm and comfortable — and are happy to have their own place. His son still is soaking it all in.

“We left to go to the store earlier today, and he didn't wanna leave. He said ‘bye-bye’ to the house and started crying. He didn't wanna leave,” Wayne said. “He just wants to be inside. I think he just wants to take in — the stability of being inside.”