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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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.

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.”