After attending a court hearing for the first time in years, Lyle and Erik Menendez are feeling more than cautiously optimistic about being release on parole, their attorney Mark Geragos said Monday.
The brothers, who attended the hearing virtually, sat next to each other and watched the status hearing inside a Van Nuys courtroom although people inside the courtroom could not see them due to technical difficulties.
“They could hear and see everything that was happening, the entire proceedings and after everything was recessed,” Geragos said.
There were also emotional moments during Monday’s hearing as the brothers listened to their aunts, Teresita Bralt, Jose Menendez’s older sister, and Joan Andersen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, pleading for their release in front of a judge.
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“Obviously they were extremely moved,” Geragos said. “Anybody who was in that courtroom and saw what happened (Monday) in the testimony – I think you'd have to be pretty cynical not to be moved.”
Baralt, 85, said it's time for her nephews to come home.
""We miss those who are gone tremendously," she said. "But we miss the kids, too."
Geragos, who had previously wanted to get the brothers released by Thanksgiving, said Monday’s hearing gave them more hope of returning home soon.
“(Monday) was a good day,” Geragos said. “They are more than cautiously optimistic.”
While the actual resentencing process will now take place under Los Angeles District Attorney-elect Nathan Hochman, rather than outgoing DA George Gascón, who had initially recommended the brothers’ sentences be reduced, Geragos said he isn't too concerned about who’s leading the DA’s office.
“My feeling is anybody who looks at this dispassionately and objectively will come to the same conclusion which is namely they didn't get a fair shake 30 years ago,” the defense attorney said, adding he had not spoken with Hochman. “There's been deputies on the resentencing who were in court who have done the hard work that Mr. Hochman refers to and have recommended and all the way up the food chain in the DA's office a resentencing.”
Geragos, who is pursuing different routes to get his clients released, also said Lyle and Erik would not have been given life sentences without the possibility of parole if they were women.
“If they were Menendez sisters, they would not be in custody today,” Geragos said, slamming the DA’s decision 30 years ago for taking the position that “boys can’t be raped.”
“(The DA’s office) accused Erik of being gay because they didn’t understand – it didn’t compute – that a father could do this to a son,” he said. “Fast forward 30 years, we have a much more evolved understanding of sexual abuse and family sexual abuse.”
