Lyle and Erik Menendez are in the news again, thanks in part to a gratuitously salacious Ryan Murphy series on Netflix. Menendez family members have condemned it as “a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare,” and while I haven’t seen the series, that sounds like a Ryan Murphy show. The brothers themselves have described it as “dishonest.”
Murphy, for his part, thinks the Menendez brothers should “be sending me flowers” because of all the attention and interest in the case that the Netflix series has generated. “There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case,” Murphy has said. “I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest in my show and what we did.”
Murphy is being a smug asshole, but he’s also not entirely wrong. The series has generated additional interest, and the Los Angeles County prosecutors have granted a resentencing hearing for the Menendez brothers, who were sentenced to life for the murder of their parents. Murphy predicts they will be out by Christmas.
Kim Kardashian—a Ryan Murphy regular—is one of those people who has offered to help. Kardashian knows the Menendez brothers, has visited them in prison, and—in her role as a criminal justice reform advocate—has written a piece for NBC News advocating on behalf of the brothers. It’s a thoughtful, well-considered piece that revisits the original trial, which ended in a hung jury, before a second trial in which they were convicted. The biggest difference is that, in the second trial, the judge would not allow a lot of the evidence illustrating that the brothers were abused by their father—the same evidence that led to hung juries in the first trials.
The killings are not excusable. I want to make that clear. Nor is their behavior before, during or after the crime. But we should not deny who they are today in their 50s. The trial and punishment these brothers received were more befitting a serial killer than two individuals who endured years of sexual abuse by the very people they loved and trusted. I don’t believe that spending their entire natural lives incarcerated was the right punishment for this complex case. Had this crime been committed and tried today, I believe the outcome would have been dramatically different.
It’s a good piece, and Kardashian has proven to be an effective criminal reform advocate, even if she’s unlikely ever actually to pass the California bar.
Source: NBC News