The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has been ordered to explain why evidence supporting the Menendez brothers’ claims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, Jose, was kept from being shared during Erik and Lyle’s second trial.
On July 7, Superior Court Judge William Ryan ruled that the DA’s office must provide an explanation of the withholding within 30 days of his ruling, court documents state.
According to court documents, two pieces of exculpatory evidence were not shared with the jury during the brothers’ second trial. That evidence included:
- A letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, in 1988. In the letter, Erik described the sexual abuse he endured, which the court said “corroborates Cano’s testimony and the sexual abuse allegations (the defendants) made at trial.”
- A declaration from Roy Rossello, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, which was signed under RCA Records, where Jose Menendez was a high-level executive. The singer came forward and said he was drugged and raped by Jose when he was a teenager.
“(The defendants) allege that this new admission counters the prosecution’s argument that Jose was ‘restrained and forgiving,’ ‘not a violent and brutal man,’ and ‘not the kind of man’ that would abuse his children,” the court document stated.
Ryan’s ruling also stated that the evidence would have likely changed the outcome of the brothers’ second trial, in which they were ultimately found guilty for their parents’ shotgun murders.
Lyle and Erik had been serving time behind bars for the 1989 killing of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. Prosecutors alleged that the killings were executed to acquire their parents’ money, but the brothers said their motive was a result of years of abuse.
Earlier this year in May, Judge Michael Jesic resentenced the brothers to 50 years to life in prison, which made them eligible for parole. Originally slated for June, the parole hearing for Erik and Lyle has since been pushed back to Aug. 21 and 22.