The Brief

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday that he would recommend resentencing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, who fatally shot their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

The move could lead to the release of the brothers, who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a case that attracted international attention.

They have been incarcerated for nearly 35 years.

Gascón said he would file the petition for resentencing with the Superior Court on Friday, and a judge would decide whether to approve it. The district attorney said he would recommend sentencing the brothers to 50 years to life in prison, making them eligible for parole.

"I believe that they have paid their debt to society," Gascón said at an afternoon news conference. "And the system provides a vehicle for their case to be reviewed by a parole board, and if parole concurs with my assessment — it will be their decision — they will be released accordingly."

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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California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

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AP

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He said people within his own office had widely differing opinions on the matter, some of whom supported the idea of resentencing and releasing the brothers immediately, and others who believe they should spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Background

After they were arrested, the brothers never denied committing the killings, in which they repeatedly fired shotguns at their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez as they watched television the night of Aug. 20, 1989. The brothers said they did so after years of sexual abuse by their father and because they feared for their lives.

They also said their mother knew about the molestation and that hers was a “mercy” killing.

Their claims were met with widespread skepticism.

Prosecutors at the time said the brothers were motivated by greed because they stood to inherit their father’s multi-million dollar estate.

Erik Menendez was 18 at the time of the murders. Lyle Menendez was 21. They are now 53 and 56, respectively.

At the Thursday news conference, Gascón, who is seeking reelection in November, stressed that his decision was not intended to excuse the brothers' actions decades ago.

"I want to underline, they were horrible acts," he said. "There is no excuse for murder, and I will never imply that what we are doing here is to excuse that behavior. Because even if you get abused, the right path is to call the police, seek help.

"But I also understand how sometimes people get desperate. We often see women, for instance, that have been battered for years and sometimes they will murder their abuser out of desperation. And I do believe that the brothers were subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home and molestation."

New evidence

Gascón’s decision follows the release of new evidence in a Netflix documentary on the case this year. The new evidence is a letter written by Erik Menendez to a cousin months before the killings in which he writes about the abuse by his father.

There have been many TV shows and documentaries about the Menendez case over the years, including a dramatized version of the story released last month that drew criticism from family members, but he noted the most recent one had brought "a tremendous amount of public attention."

"Frankly, our office got flooded with requests for information and even though this case was already scheduled to be heard in late November, I decided to move this forward," Gascón said, adding that he did so because the office didn't have the resources to handle the calls.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos, who represents the brothers, said previously that he has obtained a declaration from Roy Rossello, a former member of the band Menudo, stating Jose Menendez also molested him in the 1980s. Jose Menendez was an RCA executive who signed the band to the label.

In announcing that he was reviewing the case, Gascón said “it's important to recognize that both men and women can be victims of sexual abuse.”

In the brothers’ first trial, which was nationally televised, Judge Stanley Weisberg allowed extensive testimony about sexual abuse. The brothers had separate juries and both deadlocked.

The judge declared a mistrial.

In the brothers’ second trial, which was not televised, Weisberg severely limited testimony about sexual abuse, and a jury found them guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances.

Gascón said teams within his office "have spent hundreds of hours by now" reviewing the Menendez case, including the prison files. Among other factors, the review focused on whether the brothers had been rehabilitated and whether they could be released safely into the community.

Under that rubric, he said, the office has resentenced more than 300 people since Gascón has been in office, including 28 people who had been convicted of murder. He said four of those 300 have reoffended.

"If that was the regular recidivism rate around the country, we would be the safest nation in the world," he said.

Support from family members

Several members of the Menendez family were present at Gascón’s news conference. Last week, many of those same family members held a news conference of their own to urge Gascón to seek the re-sentencing of the brothers and their release.

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.

"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," Baralt said.

Supporters of the brothers argue they would have been found guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, based on a legal theory of imperfect self-defense. Manslaughter in California carries a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison.

Joan Andersen VanderMolen, an aunt of the Menendez brothers, said last week that she had 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."

Some oppose release

Not all members of the Menendez family want to see the brothers released.

The brother of Kitty Menendez, Milton Anderson, opposes their release, according to his attorney Kathy Cady.

“The ‘new evidence’ Gascón relies on cannot legally justify overturning the murder convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who meticulously planned and executed the cold-blooded murders of both their parents,” Cady said in a statement.

Cady said Anderson has not been contacted by Gascón’s office about a possible resentencing as required by law.

The District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to the allegation.

LAist reporter Makenna Sievertson contributed to this report.

Even as some scientists search for signs of life beyond Earth, other researchers have been discovering new species on our own humble planet faster than ever before.

From high up in the mountains to the deep sea, take a tour across the world to meet five new species discovered in 2025.

An ancient sea cow in the Persian Gulf

Qatar Museums staff and colleagues visit the excavation site of Salwasiren qatarensis, a 21-million-year-old sea cow species.

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Nicholas D. Pyenson

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Smithsonian

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Cows often get a bad rap for contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, but a newly discovered species of their ocean counterparts suggests that sea cows have been key contributors to a natural climate change solution for the past 21 million years.

This long-extinct sea cow's fossil remains were discovered in Al Maszhabiya, Qatar, which is now known to be the richest fossil sea cow deposit in the world. Like today's manatees and dugongs, it mainly grazed on seagrass and was considered an "ecosystem engineer" in the coastal waters of the Persian Gulf, where it primarily lived.

With their fleshy muzzles, these mammals would browse the seafloor, grab the plants, and use their tusks to snip the roots and eat them. In the process, they lift up nutrients from the seafloor that would otherwise be buried, which other animals in the ecosystem can use. These nutrients, in addition to the sea cow's excrement, help cultivate a healthier and more diverse ecosystem.

"Supporting seagrass communities through ecosystem engineering is a great natural climate solution, because seagrass communities store an incredible amount of carbon," says Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

The name of the new species, Salwasiren qatarensis, honors the fossil's discovery site in Qatar, and the Bay of Salwa in the Persian Gulf, where the largest herd of dugongs can be found today. But Pyenson says Salwa, an Arabic word which roughly translates to "solace," is also a nod to the potential for the new species to "elevate the visibility and protection of natural heritage," adding that "natural heritage doesn't actually, in all cases, respect geopolitical boundaries."

Pyenson is referring to the fact that the seagrass meadow in the Bay of Salwa spans the coasts of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. His colleagues are currently in the process of applying for UNESCO World Heritage status to protect the region.

"This is a great example of science diplomacy," Pyenson says, "where data sharing, making data open access and available when you publish, has the potential to actually form a metaphorical bridge between countries that maybe have not historically seen eye to eye."

You can see a 3D model of the sea cow fossil here.

A mini marsupial in the Andes Mountains

This new species of mouse opossum, called Marmosa chachapoya, has bright reddish fur and a long and delicate snout which distinguishes it from its closest relatives.

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Pedro Peloso

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A beady-eyed mouse opossum living high up in the Peruvian Andes wasn't what Silvia Pavan initially set out to find during her expedition in Río Abiseo National Park, but the new species gives yet another reason why this special region is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Pavan, an assistant professor at Cal Poly Humboldt, was on the hunt for a specific squirrel species when she and her colleagues came across an animal they eventually named Marmosa chachapoya to honor the Chachapoya people who formerly occupied the area.

The tiny marsupial (which, despite its scientific name, is not a marmoset) was the first small mammal that the researchers collected on their trip. While the animal looked a lot like a mouse opossum, its long and delicate snout and home high in the mountains set it apart from other marmosa species. But once Pavan brought the samples back, DNA analysis — coupled with a close examination of its skull — proved that this was indeed a new species.

The high-altitude area of the mountains where the expedition took place is difficult to access, but Pavan says these underexplored areas are even more important to study: "We do not know yet completely what we have, and it highlights how much we still need to explore and study the area, and how unique and important [it] is for biodiversity."

With the threat of climate change and human impact, Pavan says, "the species are being lost before we know they exist."

On this trip alone, the team of researchers collected roughly 100 different specimens that they are continuing to identify.

An undercover spider in Northern California

Marshal Hedin discovered this brown spider, Siskiyu armilla, along the river near where he grew up.

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Marshal Hedin

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Marshal Hedin was walking along the river near where he grew up in Northern California when he came across a spider he hadn't seen before. Fifteen years later, the professor of biology at San Diego State University finally got to identify it as a new species of an entirely new genus, which he named after his home of Siskiyou County.

Brown spider species like Siskiyu armilla are very difficult to tell apart using only their physical characteristics. Many species look similar because they live in the same kind of habitat: under rocks or in other dark, humid places.

To make sure the spider Hedin found was genetically different from existing species, he and his colleagues decided to perform a DNA analysis. So he returned to the river to search for a new specimen of the rare spider (and brought his son along with him, too).

Coauthor Rodrigo Monjaraz Ruedas, an assistant curator of entomology at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles who focused on the DNA analysis, was surprised to find that there was such a huge diversity of spider species in the area.

He says that if we simply assume that spiders that look similar are the same species without actually examining their DNA, "we're going to be missing a lot of the actual diversity these spiders have."

California plays an especially important role in this diversity, according to Monjaraz Ruedas. As part of a project from the California Institute of Biodiversity, which hasn't yet been published, he has found that close to 40% of the total number of described species of spiders in the U.S. can be found in the state.

Hedin, who was once oblivious to the diversity of species his home boasts, says that this journey has brought him full circle: "Now I know that it's a very unique place." He hopes that this discovery shows the other folks living along the river how special their home is.

And "this is just the tip of the iceberg," Monjaraz Ruedas says, because they're still examining 40 to 50 other spiders that might also be new species.

A smiley snailfish from the deep sea

The bumpy snailfish, Careproctus colliculi, was officially described by MBARI researchers this year.

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MBARI

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Nearly 11,000 feet into the deep sea, scientists discovered a new species that caught the attention — and affection — of viewers from around the world. The bumpy snailfish was captured on video by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute during their expedition off the shores of Central California — and with its big eyes, feathery fins and a mouth bearing the suggestion of a smile, it was an instant hit.

To help determine if the floppy pink sea creature was new or one of the 400 existing species of snailfish, they assembled a team of scientists, including Mackenzie Gerringer, an associate professor of biology at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

Even though Gerringer has "never met a snailfish [she] didn't love," she knows that the deep sea, where some of the species live, is seen as a bit of an alien environment by many people, which can come with a negative connotation.

She says the new species can help people question their assumptions about the deep sea because "you're left with these fishes that are, in my opinion, quite cute, and they really look quite fragile in an environment that we think of as being very harsh."

The research team also identified two other species of snailfish, which Gerringer says highlights just how much there still is to learn about the deep sea.

While discovering a new species can be very exciting, Gerringer believes the importance of the practice goes beyond that.

"It's critical to know who is in these ecosystems, so that we can understand how they're working, so that we can protect habitats like the deep sea that we know play hugely important roles," she says. Some of those roles, including the deep sea's ability to store enormous amounts of carbon, are especially important given the threat of climate change.

Live-birthing toads in Tanzania

Scientists have described three toad species in Tanzania, including the Luhomero Glandular Tree Toad (Nectophrynoides luhomeroensis), that give birth to live young — a rare phenomenon among frogs and toads.

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John Lyakurwa

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Many people remember learning about the typical life cycle of frogs and toads in elementary school: Eggs turn into tadpoles, which eventually become adults. But scientists have found three new species of toads in Tanzania that do something very unusual: they give birth to live young.

Another striking thing about these new species, which are all part of the genus Nectophrynoides: The journey to discover them took over 100 years. The first toad in this genus was described in the early 1900s, and because all the specimens collected looked so similar, they were all thought to belong to a singular species.

But Christoph Liedtke, an academic researcher from the Spanish National Research Council who has spent the last decade studying these toads, wondered whether there was more biodiversity in the highlands of the Eastern Arc mountains of Tanzania than previously thought. So he and his colleagues tried to see if there was more than one species in the Nectophrynoides genus.

This was no easy task because many of the specimens they needed to examine and compare to modern-day samples were collected before the time of DNA sequencing. Coauthor John Lyakurwa, an assistant lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, says that the process was like a "big puzzle that we had to solve."

So they teamed up with researchers from Denmark and Belgium to extract DNA from over 200 museum specimens. From there, they used next-generation sequencing to identify three new species in the genus, which was more than previously thought.

It's not clear how these toads will fare in the future. Like many species, their populations are in decline, with one species already extinct and others not being spotted for the past 20 years. For his PhD thesis, Lyakurwa has been focusing on understanding why these toad populations have been shrinking. Especially because of their unusual method of reproduction, he stresses that "if we lose them, we lose a very big evolutionary history."

Copyright 2025 NPR

If you celebrated Christmas this year, there’s a good chance you still have a live tree sitting at home.

It’s OK to drag your feet on taking down the decorations — but there are deadlines coming up if you want to get rid of your Christmas tree the responsible way.

Most cities and counties offer some form of free curbside pickup or drop-off, but it’s only for a limited time. Here’s your rundown of how it works.

L.A. County

There are a couple of things to keep in mind regardless of where you are. Don’t bag or wrap trees prior to recycling. Remove all decorations and stands. If you place it curbside, put it next to your bins (not in front), and if it goes inside a bin, make sure the lid closes completely.

Some rules can vary, though, so you should check with your waste hauler for certain details. You may be required to cut your tree if it’s above 6 feet, or dispose of it differently if it’s a flocked tree (coated with fake snow). For example, the city of Los Angeles says to put that in the black bin, while Long Beach can recycle it (more info on that below).

City of L.A. residents have three options for tree disposal: curbside collection, mulching and drop-off.

Curbside collection works for residents in houses and apartments through Jan 31. To use it, follow these steps:

• Cut your tree into pieces and place them inside your green compost bin.
• If your tree is too big (or you can’t cut it), place it on the curb next to your green bin on trash day. 
• If it’s larger than 6 feet tall, schedule a bulky item pickup through MyLA311.
• If you’re in an apartment or condo, just place your tree on the curb on your neighborhood’s trash day.

Mulching service is also available at the following locations:

• Open through Jan. 15: Harbor Safe Center at 1400 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro
• Open Jan. 2 to Jan. 31: Lopez Canyon Environmental Education Center at 11950 Lopez Canyon Rd., Lake View Terrace (Place trees in the the rolloff bin by the entrance.)

Drop-off sites will also be available for at least the first couple weeks of January, depending on where you go. Long Beach is also encouraging drop-off, so here’s a map of sites for both areas:

If you can’t drop it off in Long Beach, the city will have a special collection for trees on Jan. 10. For deadlines in other cities and unincorporated communities, see this list from CleanLA.

Orange County

Orange County is serviced by multiple waste haulers, which handle Christmas tree recycling. They have different timeframes and requirements based on your city. You can see a list of each provider here. We’ve included some examples below.

For Anaheim residents: Republic Services is picking up trees through Jan. 16 on trash day — just put it next to your bins. You can also recycle it by cutting it into small pieces and putting them in your brown or compost bin. After Jan. 16, you can have it picked up through Republic Services’ bulky item pickup.

For Irvine residents: Waste Management is also picking up trees through Jan. 16 that are left curbside on trash day. After this date, you can cut the tree into pieces and put it in your green bin, or schedule a bulky item pickup.

For Santa Ana residents: Republic Services is picking up trees through Jan. 13. A different truck does this work, so it’s important to put yours on the curb no earlier than noon on the day before your trash collection. After this date, you can cut the tree into pieces and put it in your green bin.

For Huntington Beach residents: Republic Services will pick up trees curbside from Jan. 5 to Jan. 9, as long as it’s outside by 7 a.m. Flocked trees go inside your trash bin or can be picked up with a bulky item request. This trash service also has a few drop-off locations available through Jan. 10.

Tech companies that create large, advanced artificial intelligence models will soon have to share more information about how the models can impact society and give their employees ways to warn the rest of us if things go wrong.

Starting January 1, a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom gives whistleblower protections to employees at companies like Google and OpenAI whose work involves assessing the risk of critical safety incidents. It also requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on their websites that include how the company responds to critical safety incidents and assesses and manages catastrophic risk. Fines for violating the frameworks can reach $1 million per violation. Under the law, companies must report critical safety incidents to the state within 15 days, or within 24 hours if they believe a risk poses an imminent threat of death or injury.

The law began as Senate Bill 53, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, to address catastrophic risk posed by advanced AI models, which are sometimes called frontier models. The law defines catastrophic risk as an instance where the tech can kill more than 50 people through a cyber attack or hurt people with a chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear weapon, or an instance where AI use results in more than $1 billion in theft or damage. It addresses the risks in the context of an operator losing control of an AI system, for example because the AI deceived them or took independent action, situations that are largely considered hypothetical.

The law increases the information that AI makers must share with the public, including in a transparency report that must include the intended uses of a model, restrictions or conditions of using a model, how a company assesses and addresses catastrophic risk, and whether those efforts were reviewed by an independent third party.

The law will bring much-needed disclosure to the AI industry, said Rishi Bommasani, part of a Stanford University group that tracks transparency around AI. Only three of 13 companies his group recently studied regularly carry out incident reports and transparency scores his group issues to such companies fell on average over the last year, according to a newly issued report.

Bommasami is also a lead author of a report ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom that heavily influenced SB 53 and calls transparency a key to public trust in AI. He thinks the effectiveness of SB 53 depends heavily on the government agencies tasked with enforcing it and the resources they are allocated to do so.

“You can write whatever law in theory, but the practical impact of it is heavily shaped by how you implement it, how you enforce it, and how the company is engaged with it.”

The law was influential even before it went into effect. The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, credited it as the basis for the AI transparency and safety law she signed Dec. 19. The similarity will grow, City & State New York reported, as the law will be “substantially rewritten next year largely to align with California’s language.”

Limitations and implementation

The new law falls short no matter how well it is enforced, critics say. It does not include in its definition of catastrophic risk issues like the impact of AI systems on the environment, their ability to spread disinformation, or their potential to perpetuate historical systems of oppression like sexism or racism. The law also does not apply to AI systems used by governments to profile people or assign them scores that can lead to a denial of government services or fraud accusations, and only targets companies that make $500 million in annual revenue.

Its transparency measures also stop short of full public visibility. In addition to providing the transparency reports, AI developers must also send incident reports to the Office of Emergency Services when things go wrong. Members of the public can also contact that office to report catastrophic risk incidents.

But the contents of incident reports submitted to OES by companies or their employees cannot be provided to the public via records requests and will be shared instead with members of the California Legislature and Newsom. Even then, they may be redacted to hide information that companies characterize as trade secrets, a common way companies prevent sharing information about their AI models.

Bommasami hopes additional transparency will be provided by Assembly Bill 2013, a bill that became law in 2024 and also takes effect Jan. 1. It requires companies to disclose additional details about the data they use to train AI models.

Some elements of SB 53 don’t kick in until next year. Starting in 2027, the Office of Emergency Services will produce a report about critical safety incidents the agency receives from the public and large frontier model makers. That report may give more clarity into the extent to which AI can mount attacks on infrastructure or models act without human direction, but the report will be anonymized so which AI models pose this threat won’t be known to the public.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.