A Los Angeles judge has denied Erik and Lyle Menendez's petition for a new trial, the latest blow to the brothers' bid for freedom after serving decades in prison for killing their parents in 1989 at their Beverly Hills, California, home.
In a ruling late Sept. 15, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan rejected a habeas corpus petition filed by the brothers' attorneys in 2023. The petition had challenged their incarceration based on newly revealed evidence that attorneys say would have changed the outcome of their murder trials.
The attorneys argued that two new pieces of evidence supported their claims that the brothers' father, Jose Menendez, had been sexually abusive. But in the ruling, Ryan said "neither piece of newly discover (sic) evidence is particularly strong."
Ryan noted that while the alleged new evidence "slightly corroborates" that the brothers were sexually abused, it does not negate that the two had acted with "premeditation and deliberation" when they fatally shot their parents.
"The court finds that these two pieces of evidence presented here would not have resulted in a hung jury, nor in the conviction of a lesser-included offense," the judge wrote in his 16-page decision.
