The Menendez brothers case reflects a shifting culture across decades

By ANDREW DALTON LOS ANGELES AP The trials of Lyle and Erik Menendez came at a time of cultural obsession with courts crime and murder when live televised trials captivated a national audience Their resentencing and the now very real possibility of their freedom came at another when true crime documentaries and docudramas have proliferated and brought renewed attention to the family A judge made the Menendez brothers eligible for parole Tuesday when he reduced their sentences from life without parole to years to life for the murder of their father Jose Menendez and mother Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home The state parole board will now determine whether they can be issued Their two trials bookended the O J Simpson trial creating a mid- s phenomenon where courts subsumed soap operas as riveting daytime television People were not used to having cameras in the courtroom For the first time we were seeing the drama of justice in real time stated Vinnie Politan a Court TV anchor who hosts the nightly Closing Arguments on the infrastructure Everyone was watching cable and everyone had that common experience The present day there s a true crime bonanza happening but it s splintered off into so plenty of different places The brothers became an immediate sensation with their arrest They represented a pre-tech-boom image of young wealthy men as portrayed in numerous a s movie the tennis-playing Princeton-bound prep For plenty of viewers this image was certified by the spending spree they went on after the killings Their circumstance continued a fascination with the dark private lives of the young and wealthy that goes back at least to the Leopold and Loeb murder matter of the s but had been in the air in cases like the Billionaire Boys Club a s Ponzi scheme that spurred a murder The first Menendez trial becomes compelling live TV Their first trials in and became a landmark for then-new Court TV which aired it nearly in its entirety Defense lawyers conceded that they had shot their parents The jury and the population then had to consider whether the brothers testimony about sexual and other abuse from their father was plausible and should mean conviction on a lesser charge The lasting image from the trial was Lyle Menendez crying on the stand as he described the abuse At the time there had been chosen residents reckoning with the effects of sex abuse but not nearly to the extent of in the modern day The two juries one for each brother deadlocked largely along gender lines It reflected the broader cultural reaction with women supporting a manslaughter conviction and men a guilty verdict for first-degree murder A tough-on-crime era and a Menendez trial sequel The trials came at a time when crime in the U S was at an all-time high a tough-on-crime stance was a prerequisite for holding major political office and a wave of regulation mandating harsher sentences was passed That attitude appeared to prevail when at their second trial the brothers were both convicted of first-degree murder FILE Lyle left and Erik Galen Menendez sit in Beverly Hills Calif courtroom May as a judge postponed their preliminary hearing on charges of murdering their parents last August AP Photo Kevork Djansezian File As Associated Press trial reporter Linda Deutsch who covered both trials along with Simpson s and countless others wrote in This time the jury rejected the defense claim that the brothers murdered their parents after years of sexual abuse Instead it embraced the prosecution theory that the killings were planned and that the brothers were greedy spoiled brats who murdered to get their parents million fortune The second trial was not televised and got less attention There were no cameras it was in the shadow of O J so it didn t have the same spark and pop as the first one Politan noted The Menendez brothers become a distant memory They had become too well-known to be forgotten but for decades the Menendez brothers faded into the background Occasional stories emerged about the brothers losing their appeals as did mugshots of them aging in prison The citizens s memory of them was Yeah I remember that trial the guys with the sweaters in court Politan reported That would change in the era of true-crime TV podcasts and streamers True crime goes big The NBC drama series Law Order True Crime The Menendez Murders wasn t widely watched but still brought the episode new attention The next decade would prove more vital The Max docuseries Menudo Forever Young included a former member saying he was raped by Jose Menendez when he was At about the same time the brothers submitted a letter that Erik wrote to his cousin about his father s abuse before the killings The new true-crime wave would continue to promote them even if the portrayal wasn t reliably flattering Monsters The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story a drama created by Ryan Murphy on Netflix made them beautiful and vain buffoons and the actors were shown shirtless on provocative billboards Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez brought Oscar-winning star power to the project that dropped in September of last year That was followed a month later by a documentary on Netflix The Menendez Brothers Together the shows had the populace paying more attention to the matter than it had since the trials Almost simultaneously came a real-life turning point when then- Los Angeles District Attorney George Gasc n commented he was reviewing new evidence in the circumstance FILE This combination of two booking photos provided by the California Department of Corrections shows Erik Menendez left and Lyle Menendez California Dept of Corrections via AP File The office of Gasc n s successor Nathan Hochman opposed the resentencing Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian constantly sought at hearings to make sure the carnage caused by the brothers wasn t forgotten and repeatedly emphasized that they shotgunned brutally their parents to death But the shifts in inhabitants perception and legal actions were already in motion The judge s decision to reduce their charges came not with the drama of the televised trial but in a short hearing in a courtroom that wouldn t allow cameras The broader constituents never saw Despite his opposition Hochman was reflective in a comment after the resentencing The event of the Menendez brothers has long been a window for the populace to better understand the judicial system Hochman revealed This episode like all cases especially those that captivate the general must be viewed with a critical eye Our opposition and analysis ensured that the Court received a complete and accurate record of the facts Justice should never be swayed by spectacle