If you’re familiar with Lyle and Erik Menendez, you’re probably wrong about them. That’s what Kim Kardashian is saying in a personal essay she published on NBC’s website yesterday, arguing that the brothers, who were convicted for the 1989 murder of their parents and sentenced to life without parole, should be released.
Kim opens with an appeal to empathy: “we are all products of our experiences. They shape who we were, who we are, and who we will be. Physiologically and psychologically, time changes us, and I doubt anyone would claim to be the same person they were at 18.” Lyle and Eric Menendez were 21 and 18 years old respectively in 1989, when they murdered their parents in their Beverly Hills living room as the couple was watching TV, shooting them multiple times with Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns.
“As is often the case, this story is much more complex than it appears on the surface,” writes Kardashian. She goes on to detail the years of sexual abuse that both men allegedly suffered at the hands of their father, Jose Enrique. A then-8-year-old Lyle told his cousin Diane about the abuse, and when she related his claims to his mother, Mary Louise, she got nowhere: “I could tell that she was not believing any of this,” she told ABC News in 2021. “Following years of abuse and a real fear for their lives,” Kardashian continues, “Erik and Lyle chose what they thought at the time was their only way out — an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare.”
Indeed, these facts proved decisive in the initial mistrial of the cases against Lyle and Erik, as testimony on behalf of the brothers from family members led to more than half of the jurors voting not guilty in each of their separate trials. Public opinion, however, was inflamed. The vicious nature of their crime, as well as their actions afterwards – the brothers created an alibi, destroyed evidence of their crime, and lived a life of luxury, with travel, expensive purchases (even a Porsche) and leisure in the months that followed – captured the morbid fascination and harsh judgment of the American public at the time, intensified by the TV broadcast of their trial. As Kardashian explains, “there was no room for empathy, let alone sympathy” for the brothers.
The reality TV star goes on to note the changed rules of the second trial against Lyle and Erik, where much evidence, including testimony concerning their abuse, was deemed inadmissible, tipping the scales towards a conviction from the start. She points out how biases at that time against boys and men who suffered abuse should also not be ignored: “can anyone honestly deny that the justice system would have treated the Menendez sisters more leniently?”
Kim makes sure to state clearly that the Menendez brothers’ crime was “not excusable,” but that the facts taken all together have led her to conclude that she “[doesn’t] believe that spending their entire natural lives incarcerated was the right punishment for this complex case.”
Clemency for the Menendez brothers would be a continuation of what has become a new career for “Kim K” who, prior to her foray into prisoner advocacy, was best known as a pioneer of the reality TV format, as well as her fashion and skincare product lines. In 2018, Kardashian managed to get clemency for Alice Johnson, a first-time drug offender who had served 20 years behind bars in Tennessee, by personally lobbying then-President Donald Trump. In 2021, she maintained a consistent social media pressure campaign to spare the life of death row inmate Julius Jones, whose sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison just hours before he was due to be killed by the state, thanks to her efforts.
A total tally of Kim’s successes in this realm has not been done, although according to TMZ, she managed at one point to free 17 inmates locked up for low-level drug offenses over a period of 90 days through her prison reform work.
Kim Kardashian has yet to pass the California state bar exam to practice law, having so far passed the “baby bar,” a first-year law student’s exam. She continues to keep her fans informed on social media, with an update from this summer that included pictures of her stacks of notes. Kim’s late father, Robert Kardashian, was a successful attorney who was part of the of O.J. Simpson’s defense in his 1995 murder trial.
