Lyle and Erik Menendez were resentenced on Tuesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole, setting the stage for their possible release after more than three decades behind bars for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion.
The decision, by Judge Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court, came after a day of testimony by family members, who said the brothers had turned their lives around inside prison through education and self-help groups. They urged the court to reduce the brothers’ sentences for the 1989 killings.
“This was an absolutely horrific crime,” Judge Jesic said as he delivered his ruling. But as shocking as the crime was, Judge Jesic said, he was also shocked by the number of corrections officials who wrote letters on behalf of the brothers, documented support that clearly swayed his decision.
“I’m not suggesting they should be released,” he said. “That’s not for me to decide.”
But, he continued: “I do believe they have done enough over the last 35 years to get that chance.” The brothers’ futures, he said, would now be in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom and state parole-board officials.
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While Judge Jesic’s decision was the most important legal step so far in the brothers’ long effort to win release, it is not the final step. In reducing the brothers’ sentences, the judge has allowed them to be immediately eligible for parole.
Now the attention will be on the state’s parole officials. The brothers were already scheduled to appear before the board on June 13 as part of Mr. Newsom’s consideration of clemency, a separate process that has unfolded in parallel to the resentencing effort.
It was unclear if the June hearing would address both the resentencing and clemency request. A spokesperson for Mr. Newsom said his office was reviewing the judge’s decision and determining next steps.
Lawyers for the brothers made only brief statements after the hearing, thanking supporters.
Anamaria Baralt, a cousin of the brothers who testified on Tuesday, faced the dozens of cameras assembled outside the courthouse. “I have been crying all day long. These are tears of joy, for sure,” she said.
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Nathan J. Hochman, the Los Angeles district attorney who has opposed resentencing for the brothers, did not provide statements after the ruling. He and his team have argued repeatedly that the brothers failed to demonstrate that they have “full insight” into their crimes. The brothers, they argued, never renounced their claim that they killed their parents because they feared their parents would kill them first, which prosecutors maintained was a lie.
The decision to resentence the brothers is a remarkable turn in a saga that has gripped the nation’s attention for decades. The brothers tried unsuccessfully to appeal their convictions for many years, and they had said that over time, their hopes of being released had diminished. As the years passed, the brothers evolved into cultural icons in their own right, amassing a loyal following as a series of docudramas and documentaries retold their stories for a younger audience.
In 1989, the story of sexual abuse and murder in one of America’s ritziest cities was irresistible to the media and public, and it foreshadowed an even greater obsession with another Los Angeles story — the murder case against O.J. Simpson.
The brothers said they burst into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion on a Sunday evening in 1989 and killed their parents with shotguns because they had endured years of sexual abuse from their father. They said they feared their parents would kill them to keep the abuse secret. At the time, Lyle was 21 and Erik, 18.
Now two middle-aged men, the brothers appeared remotely at the resentencing hearing on Tuesday from their prison near San Diego, sitting stoically in blue jumpsuits while witness after witness testified on their behalf.
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After Judge Jesic said that he would resentence the brothers — but before he said what the new sentence would be — the brothers made statements. Through a video feed, they took responsibility for the crimes and apologized to their relatives in the courtroom, who could be heard softly sobbing.
Lyle spoke first, saying that all the choices he made in August 1989 were his own, including “the choice to reload, return to the den and run up to my mother and shoot her in the head.” And he took responsibility, he said, for making a “mockery of the criminal legal system” by lying to the police and trying to solicit others to lie for him on the witness stand at trial.
He said that at the time, he was a young man “scared and filled with rage,” who was too ashamed of the sexual abuse happening in his house to find someone and ask for help.
Erik also took responsibility for the crimes and said he had spent a long time wondering what his parents must have been thinking the night they were murdered, and “the terror they must have felt when their own son fired a gun at them.”
Back then, the case played out as a sort of reckoning of the policies and culture of the 1990s: the tough-on-crime measures that left California’s prisons overcrowded; the societal attitudes about sexual abuse that eyed the brothers’ story with skepticism; the gavel-to-gavel televised trial coverage; and the late-night comics who regularly mocked the brothers as privileged dilettantes.
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Their first trial, in 1993, landed during a tumultuous time in Los Angeles. Officers in the beating of Rodney King had been acquitted of assault, catalyzing deadly riots.
After their first trial ended in mistrials — the brothers were tried together with separate juries — they went on trial a second time after Mr. Simpson’s acquittal.
This time, the brothers faced different rules in the courtroom. Cameras were banned, and the judge limited testimony and evidence about sexual abuse. The jury convicted the brothers of murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In recent years, the brothers have drawn sympathy from many young people who were not alive at the time of the crimes. Learning about the case online, they have come to believe that the brothers were mistreated by the criminal justice system and the media, and have rallied to their cause on social media.
Your investigation of these allegations is consistent with the IG’s mission to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies, and can help determine if politically connected crypto interests are undermining our national security. As Congress considers legislation on the market structure for digital assets, we must ensure that cryptocurrencies like USD1 are not providing the President and senior officials with the ability to line their pockets at the expense of the public interest.
The following facts have been reported in multiple outlets regarding Mr. Witkoff:
• Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach Witkoff is the CEO of World Liberty Financial (WLF), which the President’s family owns a majority stake in.³
• Beginning in January, one of Sheikh Tahnoon’s employees, Fiacc Larkin, joined WLF as the “chief strategic advisor” while continuing to work at G42, an AI investment firm owned by Sheikh Tahnoon that, according to the U.S. intelligence community, works closely with Chinese military companies.4
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On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff announced that MGX, a state-owned investment firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, had agreed to use a WLF-issued stablecoin, USD1, to make a $2 billion investment in Binance. As a result of this deal, WLF stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees from MGX, and more from the returns on any investments it makes with the $2 billion deposit.³
As of August, Mr. Witkoff maintained a financial interest in WLF and thus stands to personally benefit from his son’s business dealings with the UAE.6 Nevertheless, he did not recuse himself from deliberations regarding the UAE, which may violate federal ethics law.
The following facts have been reported about Mr. Sacks:
●
•
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He is a special government employee who continues to serve as a “general partner” at his venture capital fund, Craft Ventures.
8
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, was an early investor in Craft Ventures and continues to hold an investment in the fund.
In addition, Craft Ventures is invested in BitGo, which has partnered with WLF to provide the technical infrastructure for USD1. If BitGo’s valuation grows, based on the UAE’s investment into USD1, Mr. Sacks and his firm stand to benefit.
3 Yahoo Finance, “Trump family reportedly has a 60% stake in the World Liberty Financial,” Anand Sinha, March 31, 2025,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-family-reportedly-60-stake-172742661.html.
4 New York Times, “Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China,” Mark Mazzetti and Edward
Wong, Nov. 27, 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/us/politics/ai-us-uae-china-security-g42.html.
5 New York Times, “At a Dubai Conference, Trump’s Conflicts Take Center Stage,” David Yaffe-Bellany, May 1, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-
announcement.html.
6U.S Office of Government Ethics, Form 278e for Steven C. Witkoff, August 13, 2025, p. 23, https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/090d0de07e1d2fdf/bbf02867-full.pdf.
18 U.S.C. § 208.
8 White House, “Limited Waiver Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) Regarding A.I. Assets,” June 2025,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/David-Sacks.pdf.
Nigel Farage has refused to criticise Donald Trump’s claims that paracetamol, sold in the US as Tylenol, could cause autism, insisting “science is never settled” and he would never “side with” medical experts.
The Reform UK leader said he had “no idea” if the US president was right to tell pregnant women to avoid taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol and paracetamol, and suggesting that those who could not “tough it out” should limit their intake.
Scientists and global health agencies including the World Health Organization have strongly dismissed Trump’s false claims, calling them misguided and saying the evidence linking paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism was “inconsistent”.
The UK’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”, adding: “I trust doctors over President Trump frankly, on this.”
But in a wide-ranging interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Farage was asked directly if Trump was right to share those unproven claims. He said: “I have no idea, I’ve no idea. You know we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn’t. Who knows Nick, I don’t know.
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“He [Trump] has a particular thing about autism. I think because there’s been some in his family, he feels it very personally. I’ve no idea.”
When Farage was asked if he would side with medical experts who say it is dangerous to make the link, he added: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody, right? You know? I don’t side with anybody, because science is never settled. We should remember that.”
Yet when challenged over whether it was irresponsible for Trump to make such an unproven claim, Farage said: “That’s an opinion he’s [Trump’s] got. It’s not one that I necessarily share.”
Farage’s refusal to condemn Trump’s claims comes weeks after a controversial doctor, Aseem Malhotra, was given top billing at Reform UK’s party conference and used his main-stage speech to claim the Covid vaccine caused cancer in the royal family. Malhotra is an adviser to Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy.
In the same interview, Farage said Trump was “right to say” that sharia law “is an issue in London”.
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“Never take what he [Trump] says literally, ever on anything. But always take everything he says seriously,” Farage said, adding: Trump “has a point.”
“So is he right to say that sharia is an issue in London? Yes. Is it an overwhelming issue at this stage? No. Has the mayor of London directly linked himself to it? No.”
Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to reprimand Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed in a speech to the United Nations: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed.
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“Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
Trump has been publicly attacking the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, since 2015 when the Labour politician criticised Trump, the then presidential candidate, for suggesting that Muslims should be banned from travelling to the US.
A spokesperson for Khan said: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response. London is the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities and we’re delighted to welcome the record number of US citizens moving here.”
During the LBC phone-in, Farage also said Reform’s plan to ban anyone who was not a UK citizen from claiming benefits would not apply to Ukrainians and Hongkongers.
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“No, because they come for different reasons,” Farage said, adding those who had lived in the UK on indefinite leave to remain and had not worked or paid into the system would be told their benefits would be cut.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Alphabet’s market capitalisation surged above $3tn for the first time on Monday on the back of a sharp rally for the search giant’s shares over the past few weeks.
Shares in Google’s parent company have climbed more than 30 per cent to a record high of $252 since the group posted double-digit growth in revenue and profit in quarterly results out in late July.
The rally means Alphabet joins Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple as the only US companies valued above $3tn. Chipmaker Nvidia in July became the first company to hit a $4tn market value.
