#mark geragos

After spending most of their adult lives in prison for committing one of the most sensational double murders in U.S. history, the execution of their parents in Beverly Hills in August of 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez could be released as early as this summer.

Lyle (left) and Erik Menendez in Beverly Hills Municipal Court on March 12, 1990, following their arrest for the murders of their parents.

By Nick UT/AP images

It’s rare for any murderer to walk into a parole hearing with the loved ones of their victims not fighting for continued incarceration but instead, making impassioned pleas for the killers’ release. But that is exactly what is expected to happen on Aug. 21, the first day of California Board of Parole Hearings for Lyle and Erik Menendez, who have spent 35 years in prison for the killings of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez. 

When they face the parole board, the brothers will have dozens of Menendez family members — and other unlikely champions — on their side. Correctional officers. A longtime law and order, lock ‘em up Florida judge. Prison wardens.

Here is what the Menendez brothers told the court about their ugly past, the amends they are making in the present and their unfettered hope for their futures. 

Lyle and Erik as teenagers with the cousins who have spent years fighting for their release.

Courtesy the Menendez family

Lyle Menendez

Video court statement, May 13, 2025

“On August 20, 1989, I killed my mom and my dad. I make no excuses and I offer no justification. I take full responsibility for my choices and for the person I was when I made those choices. The choice to confront my dad about the abuse. The choice to keep the family secrets instead of asking for help. The choice to stay instead of leave. The choice to buy guns and ammunition. The choice to point guns at my parents and shoot them in their own home. The choice to reload and return to the den and run up to my mother on the floor and shoot her again. The choice to run and lie and hide and do anything I could to get away with these terrible crimes. The choice to make a mockery of the criminal legal system by suborning perjury.

I have spent many years facing what I did and trying to understand who I was and why I made this horrific choice. Again, I offer no excuse or justification. I do not blame my parents. But I now understand that I was a 21-year-old who believed I could fix what could not be fixed. I was immature, impulsive, distrusting, emotionally isolated and in a codependent relationship with my little brother with whom I shared a traumatic bond. I bottled up my emotions and anger. I carried a deep shame that I hid from everyone 

I had always relied on my father to solve the big problems in my life. I was suddenly on my own and reeling. My choice to buy guns that Friday did not come from logic or reason. I was scared, but I was also filled with rage … I would not have bought a gun had I had the coping skills to process my emotions, had I taken more time to consider options, had I trusted others to help; had I made different choices, I would not have committed these crimes.

Even after I killed my father, his voice was still in my head … I carried a deep shame. I clung to the belief that no one would believe my brother and I about the sexual abuse. I had no respect for institutions and societal norms. Without my father to solve this crisis, I was floundering and desperate. I could not accept the consequences of my actions. I felt responsible for the situation we were in, and I acted out in inexcusable ways. I am sorry for it, and for putting people in that position simply because I didn’t want to face my own reality.

Today, 35 years later, I am deeply ashamed of who I was, sitting in that jail. I am thankful for Fr. Ken Deasy, who worked with me for almost two years to find the courage to speak publicly about the family secrets. He taught me to let go of expectations, the need to control results, and helped me begin to release the burden of shame.

In 1996, I was faced with a daunting and seemingly hopeless journey: Life without the possibility of parole. I knew I deserved the suffering to come. I also knew I needed to grow up, to heal, to mature and to change. I struggled, especially in the beginning, and I am sorry for the mistakes that I made, but eventually I chose to live a life of personal growth, education and service to others."

Erik Menendez

Video court statement, May 13, 2025

"I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to address the court and my family. It is an incredible privilege to be able to speak before the court today. I do so with deep recognition of the gravity of these proceedings and with profound sorrow for everyone in my family, all of whom are still deeply impacted by the tragedy I created. Thirty-five years ago, on August 20, 1989, I committed an atrocious act of brutality against two people who had every right to live. I took the lives of Mary Louise Menendez and Jose Enrique Menendez, my mother and father. My actions were criminal; they were also selfish, cruel and cowardly. I stole from my parents the right to a full life. I took from my relatives the right to share a life with my parents. I stole from the neighbors the right to a peaceful and safe community. I have no excuse, no justification for what I did; there is nothing that can make it any less wrong. Afterwards, I tried to create an alibi at the movie theater, I take full responsibility for my crime and blame no one else. I was the one who reached out to my 21-year-old brother that Tuesday for help. I was the one who convinced him that we couldn’t escape. I was the one who was too ashamed to turn to my family or anyone else for help. I was the one who didn’t trust in the police when I should have. Instead, I bought guns, I bought ammunition and I barged into the den, where my parents were watching television. I fired all five rounds at my parents. Then I ran back out to the car to get more ammunition. Neither my brother nor I stopped until my parents were dead.

I discarded the guns and I did everything I could to get away with my crimes. I lied to police about what I had done. I lied to my family. I am truly sorry. This crime should never have happened. My parents should be alive. They’re not, and I know that’s because of me … My crime was not just criminal and wrong and immoral, it was cruel and vicious. It was more than the murder of two people; it was the infliction of unimaginable and horrible suffering on them and everyone who loved them. I am directly responsible for it all. My choices that night robbed my parents of their full lives. No apology could ever reduce their suffering by even a degree. Continually apologizing, I realized, was a selfish act. As much as I wanted release from my guilt and shame, there was no release from it. For most of my life, I believed I would die in prison. The weight of a life sentence without the possibility of parole broke me. I fell into a life on the maximum-security yard, where violence and misery were routine, the only constants. For a long time, I lost all hope. I lost myself. Depression spreads like wildfire here, and when hope is gone, pain takes its place. That pain hangs over so many of us and makes it hard to grow and heal. In 2013, something shifted in me. It became a turning point — I was given the opportunity to serve others. I began caring for the elderly, the disabled and the terminally ill. It may seem small, but that act of service changed everything for me. I mattered to others. I had purpose … I was part of a community."

The extended Menendez family celebrates the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez with their legal team, which includes Mark Geragos (also the co-owner of Engine Vision Media, the parent company of Los Angeles), Alexandra Kazarian of Geragos & Geragos, Cliff Gardner and others.

Courtesy Alexandra Kazarian

Geragos hugs a Menendez family member, Kathleen Simonton.

Courtesy Michele McPhee

The Long Road to Redemption

The Menendez brothers' case has transfixed the nation since 1989. Here are some of the pivotal moments in the lives of the country’s most infamous siblings.

August 20, 1989 Jose and Kitty Menendez are in the den of their Beverly Hills home when their sons, Lyle, then 21, and Erik, then 18, burst in and opened fire.

March 8, 1990Lyle Menendez is arrested outside the family’s Beverly Hills mansion and charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances.

March 11, 1990  Erik Menendez turns himself in to authorities. The brothers are told they could face the death penalty.

July 1993 The brothers go on trial, each with a separate jury, and detail sexual abuse they suffered from their father.

January 1994 Both juries deadlock and the trials end in mistrials.

October 1995 The brothers’ second trial begins, this time with a single jury and limited testimony about their abuse claims.

March 1996 The jury convicts both brothers of first-degree murder.

July 1996 The brothers are sentenced to life in prison without parole.

February 1998 A California appeals court upholds the brothers’ conviction.

May 2023 Roy Rosselló of the band Menudo reveals he was raped by Jose Menendez.

May 2023 Lawyers Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner file a writ of habeas corpus citing new evidence that supports abuse claims from Lyle and Erik Menendez.

September 2024 Netflix drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, is released.

October 2024 Los Angeles County D.A. George Gascón says he believes the brothers were abused and should be “immediately paroled.” Two dozen Menendez relatives announce a coalition to push for the brothers’ release.

November 2024 California Governor Gavin Newsom says he will delay his clemency ruling in connection with the brothers until incoming District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who replaced Gascón, can review the case.

February 2025 Hochman, who grew up in Beverly Hills, announces he will not support the petition for the Menendez brothers’ resentencing.

March 10, 2025 Hochman battles the Menendez brothers’ defense team in court. 

April 11, 2025 Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic rules against Hochman, saying he has authority to proceed with the resentencing hearing. 

May 13, 2025 After hearing emotional statements from each of the Menendez brothers, Jesic resentences them to 50 years to life in prison, making them immediately eligible for parole.

August 21-22, 2025 Lyle and Erik Menendez will appear in front of the California Board of Parole Hearings.

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

In a letter to the Fox Network, Hunter Biden’s attorneys have put the company on notice that it’s about to get its pants sued off for defamation.  Again. Biden’s attorney, Mark Geragos, best known for his successful representation of celebrities, issued the following statement: 

[For the last five years, Fox News has relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden and made him a caricature in order to boost ratings and for its financial gain. The recent indictment of FBI informant Smirnov has exposed the conspiracy of disinformation that has been fueled by Fox, enabled by their paid agents and monetized by the Fox enterprise. We plan on holding them accountable.]

The letter specifically cited the network’s “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” It also stated that Hunter Biden would be suing the network “imminently.” Supporters of the younger Biden cheered, glad to see he was finally taking the gloves off against purveyors of salacious, fake news. Fox is already reeling from other defamation lawsuits, including one it settled with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million and another by Smartmatic, a voting software company presently seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Not everyone is happy, though. Advisers to the president had been hoping his son would keep a low profile and not put himself back in the news during an election year. They worried that news stories about the lawsuit would resurface the allegations, even if false and defamatory, which would then suck the air out of the news cycle. Such media time might otherwise be focused on Donald Trump’s problems and Joe Biden’s many accomplishments.

[...]

The Burisma bribes lie

There are three main things Fox was fixated upon that have now opened it to possible massive liability. The first is what I call the fake “Burisma bribes.” Fox gleefully amplified the false claims of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who had conveyed to his handler that he had information that both Joe and Hunter Biden had accepted $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian company, Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden once served. This false statement was dutifully recorded, as most statements by informants are no matter how wild, in a standard FBI informant form. This was left to gather dust for years until Rudy Giuliani and the FBI, at Bill Barr’s urging, resurfaced and weaponized it along with help from members of Congress.

For its part, Fox made sure that story went wide and was repeated ad nauseam. For months, host Sean Hannity ran nonstop coverage about the alleged bribe, poisoning viewers with actual Russian disinformation. Hannity’s show alone aired at least 85 segments that amplified these false Burisma bribery claims in 2023. Of those 85 segments, 28 were Hannity monologues.  After his indictment and arrest, Smirnov admitted that the story he received had come straight from Russian intelligence. By centering and repeating the fake story, Fox had become a willing Russian disinformation mule, along with many members of Congress. But it never retracted the story or apologized for its role. Instead, it continued to claim that the source, Smirnov, was “highly credible.”

[...]

Nude pics

We all have heard about, but hopefully not personally seen, intimate images of Hunter Biden at parties and in sexual acts with various partners. His lawyers claim that these images were “hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated” from his private accounts, and then aired by Fox in violation of his civil rights and copyright law. They also appeared during congressional hearings as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-MW) infamously used them as visual props. (She’s lucky to be shielded by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution, or she could be swept up in a suit as well.) The decision to go after those committing what amounts to “revenge porn” on Hunter Biden, including the Fox Network, is part of a larger legal counteroffensive that began last year, according to sources with NBC News.  As you may recall, the “Hunter Biden Laptop” story emerged as a kind of “October surprise” in 2020. The repair technician who leaked the contents of it to Rudy Giuliani later sued Biden and others for defaming him, claiming he had suffered damage to his reputation because they had claimed the laptop contents were part of a Russian disinformation campaign. 

[...]

The “Trial of Hunter Biden”

In fall of 2021, Fox aired a six-part series called “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” which amounted to a mock trial of what his upcoming trial would look like if he were charged with being a foreign agent or with bribery, none of which has happened.  Biden’s lawyers claim in their demand letter that “the series intentionally manipulates the facts, distorts the truth, narrates happenings out of context, and invents dialogue intended to entertain. Thus, the viewer of the series cannot decipher what is fact and what is fiction,” and it should be removed entirely from all streaming services.

[...]

The reality is, Fox and other right wing media continue to give oxygen to Rep. James Comer, who has yet to end his evidence-free impeachment inquiry. At least now, Fox will be on notice that it could face ongoing liability for failing to retract its false reporting, even while pushing out more lies about Hunter Biden. The network will have to tread more carefully, and ultimately it will have to consider whether it doubles down or backs off. Then there is the actual trial of Hunter Biden which is set to begin this fall. Attention will be on the president’s son at that time anyway, but with this lawsuit, just as with his counterclaims and counteroffensives against those who violated his privacy, Hunter Biden will look like a fighter and not just a victim. With all that has been done and said about him, he has very little to lose but a very large ax to grind. And if the GOP overplays its hand, as it inevitably will, it could create voter sympathy for him, even though it had hoped to paint him as a criminal, drug addicted womanizer. Democrats are often accused of not having enough courage to go on the offensive, of being too reticent to push back against the onslaughts of numerous bad faith actors on the right. Then when they do, there’s a good deal of hand wringing about how this assertiveness might come across to the voters.

Here's proof that everything is connected

Mike Florio at ProFootballTalk: 

The first snippets of testimony have emerged from the depositions taken in the Colin Kaepernick collusion grievance. And it’s becoming even more obvious that the NFL changed its anthem policy at the direct behest of the President.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, while testifying in the Kaepernick collusion grievance, shared the details of a phone call with the President.

“This is a very winning, strong issue for me,” the President told Jones, according to Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal. “Tell everybody, you can’t win this one. This one lifts me.”

The President was right. There was no way to win. Even by giving in.

Per Beaton, the NFL declined comment on the matter, citing the confidentiality that applies to the grievance proceedings. A White House official did not dispute the testimony.

“The majority of the American people agree with the president, love our country, love our flag and believe it should be respected,” the White House official told Beaton. (This ignores the results of the NFL’s secret poll from last year, which showed that people both opposed and supported the protests that have been happening during the anthem. The NFL has chosen, however, to heed only the opinions of those who oppose the protests, possibly because that side reflects the President’s stated viewpoint.)

Beaton also reports that Jones, along with Texans owner Bob McNair and Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, testified that they believed the protests were hurting the NFL financially. Which of course conflicts with recent statements from Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who justified the new contract given to Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan by claiming that league and club revenues are up.

Regardless of whether it’s rooted in fact, owners have chosen to believe that the protests are bad for business, in large part because the President had chosen to continue to stir up his base by chastising the NFL for allowing the protests. Which not only suggests that collusion arising from a mutual desire to placate the President may be influencing the ongoing unemployment of Kaepernick and Eric Reid, but also potentially bolsters the opinion of attorney Mark Geragos that the President may have run afoul of federal law by interfering with private employment decisions for political reasons.

From Robert Rand:

"First, a huge shout out to @markgeragos who was brilliant - as always - calling out DA Nathan Hochman on another hour full of BS. Mark (along with appellate attorney Cliff Gardner who is a key interview in our "Menendez/Menudo" documentary) challenged Mr. Hochman on his lies, misrepresentation of inaccurate facts, and basic subterfuge.

Nathan Hochman tried to point out 16 LIES that he said Erik and Lyle told in the first trial. What DA Hochman didn't mention was that all 16 points he brought up were litigated or resolved - many before the first trial ever began.

Then, there were major factual errors in DA Hochman's "presentation" such as the knee capping of Jose Menendez to make it look like a Mafia hit. Just one problem: There are several crime scene photos that show Jose's knees totally intact. There is an upper thigh wound on one of Jose's legs but it's nowhere near his knees. Also, there was no evidence of Kitty being knee capped. But why let the facts get in the way of a DA's fantasy.

And what about subterfuge? The repeated comparisons by Hochman to the case of RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan is totally deceitful. It's comparing apples to oranges. 🍊 Completely ridiculous. Shame on Nathan Hochman.

Lindsay Gibbs at ThinkProgress: 

Last month, the NFL announced a new policy for its players during the national anthem: Players are permitted to stay in the locker room during the anthem, but if they go out onto the field during it, they must stand. If any of the players takes  a knee, the team will be fined.

Soon afterwards, a Wall Street Journal report confirmed what most have long suspected: That President Donald Trump’s public outrage about NFL players protesting police brutality and systemic racism during the national anthem at football games heavily influenced NFL owners to change the rule, and discouraged them from signing players who would protest.

It’s all terrible news for those in favor of free speech and peaceful protest, and for those against white nationalism and police brutality.

However, Mark Geragos, the lawyer representing Kaepernick in his collusion lawsuit against the NFL, sees the glass as being half full: He believes that both the anthem rule change and the information about Trump’s influence on NFL owners will go a long way towards helping him prove that the NFL and NFL owners colluded to keep Kaepernick out of the NFL, despite the fact that he had the talent to be a starting quarterback in the league.

Geragos also believes that Trump’s direct influence over NFL owners on this issue violates federal law. U.S. Code 227 says that members of Congress or the executive branch cannot “wrongfully influence a private entity’s employment decision … solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation.”

A few revelations from the last couple of weeks strongly support Geragos’ case here, and it’s important to remember that Geragos knows much more about the case than we do — he has taken the depositions of more than a dozen NFL owners, while the public only knows about the depositions that have leaked.

[...]

Of course, the NFL’s official stance has always been that it’s up to each individual team who they sign and don’t sign, and that it’s just a coincidence that Kaepernick and his former teammate Eric Reid —  a talented, unsigned safety who protested during the 2016 and 2017 seasons and also has a collusion lawsuit against the NFL — are currently unemployed.

But Geragos has implied there’s plenty of evidence to contradict that claim. This week on CNN, he said more information on collusion between the NFL and Trump to keep Kaepernick out of the league is coming.

Thank you to Mark - Luigi need all the public support he can get ❤️

How do none of these interviewers know the trial, like at all. When you ask, 'What about Kitty?' you sound so dumb and ignorant, I can't even explain it. Why didn't Geragos correct her with the testimony from Dr Ann Tyler? For the last time, for the people in the cheap seats, Kitty was not a passive observer here. She was a willing participant and she enjoyed hurting her sons. She didn't love them, and she abused them. She sexually molested Lyle, and that was seen by Diane van der Molan when Kitty washed her teenage son's hair. Why do we never speak about this? This was an incest family. I am sure that there was more abuse that we don't know about, particularly with the brothers. Given that Jose made them shower together as adults.