Menendez brothers case: Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón will take the stand this week

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he plans to decide his position on a possible resentencing of the Menendez brothers by the end of the week.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were sentenced to life in prison for the 1989 murders of their parents in their Beverly Hills home. But the brothers' defense team has been pushing for a resentencing for a year based on new evidence that supports the brothers' claims of being sexually and physically abused by their parents.

Gascón said he originally planned to comment on the defense arguments until a hearing in November. But he's accelerating that timeline given renewed public attention on the case brought by a new Netflix documentary out this month.

The Menendez case is being reevaluated

He told CNN on Tuesday that prosecutors in his office were very divided over the defense's appeal.

“I have a group of people, including some who were involved in the original trial, who firmly believe that they should spend the rest of their lives in prison and that they were not molested,” Gascón said.

“I have other people in the office who actually believe they were probably abused and deserve some relief.”

He said there was no doubt that the two brothers murdered their parents. The only question is whether, after three decades, they deserve to have their sentence eased.

In addition to claims of new evidence of abuse, the defense team also argues that the brothers deserve some relief because of the decades they have already spent in prison and the rehabilitation they have undergone.

“I plan to make a decision by the end of this week, which I promised when we received many inquiries. By the way, we have been investigating this case for over a year.”

How the resentencing process might work in the Menendez case