The DROP LWOP Coalition applauds Los Angeles DA Gascón’s decision to recommend resentencing for Erik and Lyle Menendez. Joseph Bell is an advocate with the Drop LWOP Coalition and Human Rights Watch and served 24 years of an LWOP sentence before it was commuted by Governor Brown and resentenced by San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin. Bell called on district attorneys across the state to “use their power to review LWOP cases across the board. These sentences have been disproportionately handed out to survivors of abuse, young people, and people of color. Governor Newsom also has the power to accelerate clemency for those serving LWOP, giving them a pathway to review by the Board of Parole. Many were sentenced as youth and have spent decades on their rehabilitation, despite being told there was no point.”
There are over 5,000 people serving life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) in California prisons—the sentence that Erik and Lyle Menendez have been serving for nearly 35 years. LWOP is a sentence in which a person is sent to prison for the rest of their life with no real pathway to demonstrate their change and growth to seek parole. It is now widely understood as “the other death penalty” and recognized by the United Nations as a form of torture that should be abolished. Those currently incarcerated under LWOP describe it as “a death sentence in slow motion,” arguing that LWOP effectively banishes people from the world outside prisons, dehumanizing them as irredeemable and stripping them of hope. Not only is every person capable of transformation, but over the years our society’s sentencing practices have drastically changed to better account for mitigating factors like childhood trauma, intimate partner violence, and intellectual disabilities that give a fuller picture behind the context of someone’s actions.
There is growing awareness of the arbitrary ways that LWOP gets applied by prosecutors who seek the most extreme sentence because it is easier to prove. Since 1978, California has enacted dozens of new “special circumstances” that prosecutors can charge to require LWOP or death penalty sentencing. If prosecutors add a felony murder special circumstance, for example, they only need to prove participation in an underlying felony during which a death occurs. The defendant need not be the perpetrator of the death to receive LWOP or the death penalty. 90% of people in women’s prisons serving LWOP were sentenced under this law, often being held accountable for the action’s of an abusive partner.
“I served 23 years at the Central California Women’s Facility on an LWOP sentence, spending decades advocating for the rights of so many women who received LWOP in the context of severe domestic violence,” said Kelly Savage-Rodriguez with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. “I was falsely accused of a murder committed by my abusive ex-husband. And my story is not unique.”
Between 1992–2017, the population of people serving LWOP in the US grew by 400% — from 12,453 to over 50,000. 68% of people sentenced to LWOP in California are Black and Latinx. 62% of people sentenced in CA were 25 years or younger at the time of the offense. 71% of people sentenced to LWOP were convicted for the first time, and the majority of women serving LWOP are survivors of abuse, including sexual violence, childhood abuse, human trafficking, and domestic violence.
“At the age of 12 years old, I started getting molested by my own father,” said Susan Bustamante who served 31 years on an LWOP sentence. “This led to a dynamic of victimization and abuse that played out in all of my relationships, including with a husband who physically and emotionally abused me and threatened to kill me and my family members. Far too many people have been charged with LWOP in this type of environment.”
We join the celebrities, system actors, and the general public who are honoring the second look being offered to the Menendez brothers. It shouldn’t take a Netflix show to shine a light on the injustice of an LWOP sentence. We must extend that same second look to the thousands of people in California suffering the death sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Here’s another take on why this case is coming up now:
“The real reason Los Angeles’ DA is looking into the Menendez brothers’ case
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón needs a boost for his re-election campaign. Enter the Menendez case.”
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/menendez-brothers-case-george-gascon-los-angeles-da-rcna176032
That actually doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe it doesn’t make any sense to you because you’re not in 30 points down desperation mode running for re-election.
It doesn’t make sense because first of all, it is likely to be at best a controversial decision and thus unlikely to impact his election. (Even were it popular it would hardly move the needle in the face of what is going on).
second, it attempts to ascribe political motivations to a policy that has actually been extremely consistent throughout his term. He established a resentencing division, they have resentenced over 200 people so far since 2021. That’s by far the most in the state. So now all of a sudden there are political motivations? It’s been his stated policy and his acting policy all along.
Third, it’s the right thing to do. 35 years for a crime that was committed when the men were teens, and with the extenuating circumstances seems like the right course of action.
Rather than politically motivated, this seems more in line with mass commutations after someone has lost election or is on their way out the door.