The case of the Menéndez brothers shows that real crimes can affect real life

Thirty-five years after Erik and Lyle Menendez shot and killed their parents in their Southern California home, brothers could be granted a new sentence in what its advocates have called a movement toward justice. This is largely due to increased media attention and the country’s appetite for true crime content.

The Menendezes were convicted of the murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in 1989, in a retrial after their first murder trial ended with a hung jury. To secure a second-time conviction, substantial evidence of the abuse the brothers said they suffered at the hands of their parents was excluded, their lawyers maintain.

But a groundswell of support for the brothers, who are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, followed the release of the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers” about the case earlier this month. Another Netflix offering, a dramatized performance, was released in September.

What to know: Are the Menéndez brothers being released?

Popular true crime content, which explores and often re-investigates elements of real murders and other criminal cases in documentaries, podcasts and books, often generates a wave of public interest and increased scrutiny, and in multiple cases there have been breakthroughs important after that attention.

Here are four cases where real crime has affected real cases:

The ‘Serial’ podcast and Adnan Syed’s overturned conviction

Adnan Syed had been serving a life sentence for more than a decade for the murder of his ex-girlfriend when the launch of the “Serial” podcast in 2014 changed everything. In it, journalist Sarah Koenig reexamines the evidence used to convict him and follows some loose threads in the case.

One piece of evidence raised some of the biggest questions about the case: the existence of a potential alibi witness, who said he was with Syed when the prosecution claimed the murder had been committed. Although the podcast did not conclude that Syed was innocent, it launched massive public campaigns for his freedom.

The ‘Serial’ case continues: An undo becomes a redo in Adnan Syed’s murder conviction

In 2022, he was released from prison after his conviction was overturned. The judge who overturned the conviction said prosecutors during his murder trial two decades ago improperly withheld exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors said they would drop all charges after DNA testing recently suggested Syed’s innocence.

Syed’s case is still in a complicated web of legal limbo in 2024, however. Last year, his sentence was refunded after relatives of the victim, Hae Min Lee, said their rights were violated by not giving them time to appear in person at the hearing that led to their freedom.

Although his conviction has been reinstated, he is still out of prison while waiting for a repeat of that hearing.

“Adnan Syed would be nowhere if Sarah Koenig hadn’t stepped in and made it a national spectacle,” said Deirdre Enright, a law professor and founder of the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, which was featured in the podcast. he told USA TODAY after the conviction was initially overturned. “Like most, he would have been alone.”

‘Great’ for a documentary: Robert Durst

In another case, the public attention caused by a The documentary had the opposite effect.. Robert Durst, who died in 2022, appeared in the 2015 documentary series “The Jinx,” in which prosecutors said he confessed to killing his best friend in 2000.

Durst was 78 years old when he was convicted of the execution-style murder of Susan Berman. Prosecutors said she killed Berman because she knew he had also killed his wife Kathie in 1982, although he was never charged with his wife’s murder.

In the six-part HBO documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which aired in early 2015, Durst was heard on a hot microphone saying that he “killed them all,” among other damning statements and evidence presented. Before that documentary, Durst became a public figure with the 2010 film “All Good Things,” based on his life.

Participating in the 2015 documentary was a “very, very, very big mistake,” he later said in court, the Associated Press reported.

Brandon Dassey and ‘Making a Murderer’

Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer” He almost helped free Brandon Dassey of his life sentence. Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and second-degree sexual assault in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Prosecutors said he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, who was also sentenced to life in prison in a separate trial.

The series, which came out in late 2015, raised concerns about the legitimacy of the confession given to police by Dassey, a teenager at the time of the murder. An outpouring of support for Dassey’s conviction to be overturned followed the documentary’s release, as advocates and lawyers said his confession was coerced by authorities and that no forensic evidence linked him to the crime.

A federal magistrate later overturned his conviction and he appeared to be on the verge of release from prison, until a divided appeals court reinstated it. In 2018, the Supreme Court refused to hear his case, effectively upholding the conviction.

The Menendez

The Menendezes’ original trial featured testimony from siblings accusing their father of horrific physical and sexual abuse. Their lawyers argued that the young men killed their parents in self-defense, because they believed, perhaps irrationally, that their parents were going to kill them.

The jury in that trial was hung and a new trial included much less of that testimony, his lawyers and family said.

The saga was dramatized in the Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” and the two-hour documentary followed. The result was renewed attention on a case that dominated headlines decades ago, this time fueled by streaming services and social media.

Kim Kardashian even wrote an op-ed calling for her sentence to be reconsidered. He wrote that the lack of awareness and widespread stigma about child sexual abuse clouded his chances of getting a fair trial.

NEW EVIDENCE: Will the Menéndez brothers be released? The family makes a fervent supplication

“I’ve spent time with Lyle and Erik; They are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent and honest men,” he wrote for NBC News. “I don’t think spending his entire natural life incarcerated was the appropriate punishment for this complex case.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in announcing his decision to recommend a new sentence that he was considering new evidence of the alleged abuse. He said there was an influx of inquiries to his office after the documentary came out.

Contributing: John Bacon, Christopher Cann, Minnah Arshad, Erin Jensen, Celina Tebor and Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY; Kelli Arseneau, Appleton’s post-half moon