Warning: This publish incorporates SPOILERS for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story!

With the duo’s story getting contemporary life on the Netflix present, lawyer Mark Geragos weighs in on the Menendez brothers’ possibilities of a jail launch after Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The second installment in Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology follows the titular brothers from murdering their dad and mom in 1989 via their courtroom trial, by which they cited sexual and emotional abuse from their dad and mom as the explanation behind the murders. Monsters season 2 ends with the duo receiving life sentences with out the potential of parole in 1996, the place they nonetheless are 28 years later.

On the heels of the present’s premiere, PEOPLE spoke with the brothers’ post-conviction lawyer Mark Geragos to debate how Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will impression their probabilities at getting a jail launch. This additionally comes after a Habeus Corpus petition was made to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in May 2023 after the invention of latest proof of sexual abuse allegations from former Menudo member Roy Rosselló towards Jose, who he says raped him within the ’80s, and a letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano, by which he described his father’s sexual abuse, months earlier than the murders.

Geragos says that a part of the explanation the letter was not found sooner was that “nobody had looked at [the cousin’s personal] effects until 2015“, and as such it wasn’t discovered till “10 years after our last appeal“, and that his staff’s new protection strategy is on the bottom that “the second trial did not comport with constitutional protections for a variety of reasons“:

We’re saying the second trial didn’t comport with constitutional protections for quite a lot of causes. And a Habeas [Corpus petition] has new proof. It requires new proof as a result of this case had mainly been moribund for near 17 years. And the brand new proof was the Menudo accuser and the letter that Andy Cano wrote or acquired from Erik eight months earlier than the killing.

In what this implies for the brothers’ future, Geragos says there at the moment are “three things” the decide can select to do with the petition, although says he finally issued an order for the DA to informally reply, “which they have taken very seriously over the last 15 months“. He additionally says that the protection staff has performed a conditional examination of Kitty’s older sister, and supplied statements from 24 relations who “have all asked that they be resentenced, presented a number of other documents and evidence for them to take a look at and consider while making a decision“:

The decide can do mainly three issues. The decide can deny it, the decide can order the DA to reply, or the decide can do what he did, which was subject an order for the DA to informally reply, which they’ve taken very critically over the past 15 months as a result of we have offered proof to them.

When requested in regards to the brothers’ emotions on the brand new petition, Geragos says the Menendezes are “cautiously optimistic“, whereas additionally feeling that the trial would have seen a really totally different end result if it occurred right now:

I attempted this case right now, 99 instances out of 100, it is a voluntary manslaughter. Twenty years, 30 years, the tradition strikes, and I believe extra enlightened or advanced, and folks begin to notice that perhaps there was a feeding frenzy on the time, and on a extra sober reflection, that they did not get a good trial.

Despite his optimism, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office says they’re “investigating the claims submitted in the petition“, and that the casual response is due on September 26. Both former LA senior deputy district lawyer Dmitry Gorin and protection lawyer Neama Rahmani had been additionally requested about their ideas on the brothers’ possibilities of launch, and neither feels the brand new proof will profit their enchantment, with the latter calling it a “Hail Mary-type argument“:

Dmitry Gorin
: I do not know the way a lot this new proof strikes the needle. It’s nonetheless very a lot an extended shot due to the historical past of the case, due to the prior trial rulings and since materially, this does not actually change the proof within the case. It’s extra of the identical. It’s horrible proof. It’s tragic they had been abused, however it’s extra of the identical.

Neama Rahmani
: It’s a Hail Mary sort argument. This is not sufficient, for my part. A corroborating notice or the truth that a sufferer abused another person, this isn’t the kind of proof that usually leads to a habeas petition being granted.

What This Means For The Menendez Brothers’ Release Chances

It Does Seem The Show’s Release Won’t Help Much

Though the petition might have come a bit of over a yr earlier than the present’s launch, it does appear clear that Geragos and his shoppers are hoping that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story‘s premiere will create new consciousness and help for his or her story. It definitely would not be the primary time a true-crime undertaking led to developments in broadly publicized circumstances, one of many extra notable being HBO’s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, by which the titular actual property inheritor inadvertently confessed to the murders he had beforehand been accused of, and was subsequently arrested and convicted.

However, regardless of Geragos and the Menendez brothers’ hopes, the truth that each the LAC DA’s workplace has but to make a casual response, it might level towards Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story not being sufficient to get the brothers out of jail. While Gorin and Rahmani do at the least notice that it is a “long shot” relatively than an absolute uncertainty, the proof being offered does appear to largely fall consistent with the brothers’ earlier protection stances, making it unlikely {that a} new trial can be granted.

Our Take On The Menendez Brothers’ Chances Of Being Released

Murphy’s Netflix Show Did Little to Give Them A Meaningful Defense

A 20-plus-year-old courtroom case being revisited is definitely not remarkable, nor does the passage of time essentially imply that anybody’s probabilities at overturning a previous conviction are utterly zero. Again wanting on the true crime style, each the investigative journalism podcast Into the Dark and the 2020 documentary Who Killed Malcolm X? efficiently discovered new proof within the circumstances of Curtis Flowers and the homicide of the enduring Civil Rights activist that led to the releases of the latter and two males accused of being concerned in Malcolm X’s assassination.

Even nonetheless, I do consider that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story will not be sufficient to persuade both a courtroom or the DA workplace to correctly conduct a brand new trial to probably overturn the brothers’ life sentences. Erik Menendez not too long ago got here out with a sharply essential letter in regards to the present’s “inaccurate” portrayal of him and his brother, with critics additionally agreeing that the present is a muddled mess of inconsistent tones and depictions of its titular figures. With even audiences turning towards the present compared to their optimistic response to its Jeffrey Dahmer-focused first season, Monsters might have accomplished extra hurt than good.

Source: PEOPLE