LOS ANGELES (Court TV) — A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered the Office of the District Attorney to explain why exculpatory evidence that supported the Menendez brothers’ claims of sexual abuse was withheld from the jury during their second trial.
FILE – Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez leave a courtroom in Santa Monica, Calif., Aug. 6, 1990, after a judge ruled that conversations between the brothers and their psychologist after their parents were slain were not privileged and could be used as evidence. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
During their 1993 trial, the Menendez brothers testified they killed their parents in self-defense after suffering years of sexual abuse and feared they would be killed. Their first trial ended in two hung juries.
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During their second trial, Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ruled that no testimony of the sexual abuse allegations could be heard by the jury. The brothers were convicted of double murder in March 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In May 2023, the defense filed a habeas petition claiming two new pieces of evidence would’ve likely changed the outcome of their second trials. The filing cited a letter Erik sent to his cousin eight months before the murders of their parents and new rape allegations against Jose Menendez from ex-Menudo member Roy Rossello.
In Erik’s December 1988 letter, he told his cousin Andres (Andy) Cano, “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse.” He later writes, “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.” The letter, which was not offered as evidence at either trial, was discovered in 2018 by Marta Cano, Jose Menendez’s younger sister. She ultimately provided a copy of the letter to journalist Robert Rand that year.
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The motion also referenced Cano’s testimony during the brothers’ 1993 trial, in which he testified that a 13-year-old Erik “told him that Jose Menendez was massaging his genitals, and asked if Andy’s father did the same.” The motion also states that Andy Cano died in 2003.
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Ex-Menudo member Roy Rossello also provided details of the alleged sexual abuse he suffered from Jose in the 1980s. In the motion, Rossello claimed he was drugged and raped at the Menendez family’s New Jersey home and on two other occasions during his time with the band.
In the ruling, dated July 8, a judge ordered the DA’s office to explain why the brothers’ claims of sexual abuse were kept from the jury within thirty days.
The brothers are due in court in August for a parole hearing following the reduction of their sentences in May.
