Menendez brothers: Judge to decide if siblings deserve reduced sentences – National [Video]

Erik and Lyle Menendez could learn this week whether they’ll get reduced sentences — and the chance for freedom — nearly 30 years after they were convicted of murdering their parents.

A Los Angeles judge will preside over the resentencing hearing expected to last two days, starting Thursday. The judge could make a verbal decision during the hearing or rule later with a written decision. If he shortens their sentences, the brothers would still need approval from the state’s parole board to get out of prison.

They were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering their entertainment executive father Jose Menendez and mother Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The brothers were 18 and 21 at the time of the killings. While defence lawyers argued the brothers acted out of self-defence after years of sexual abuse by their father, prosecutors said the brothers killed …