judge rule

A judge has rejected Erik and Lyle Menendez’s petition for a new trial, ruling that additional evidence that they suffered sexual abuse at their father’s hands would not have changed the outcome of the trial that has put them in prison for more than 35 years for gunning down their parents.

The ruling, handed down by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan on Monday, is the latest blow to the brothers’ bid for release. Both were denied parole during lengthy hearings in late August.

A habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of the brothers in 2023 argued they should have been able to present additional evidence at trial that their father, Jose Menendez, was sexually abusive.

The new evidence included a 1988 letter that Erik Menendez sent to his cousin, Andy Cano, saying he was abused into his late teens. There were also allegations made by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who claimed Jose Menendez raped him.

The brothers have long argued they were in fear for their lives that their father would keep abusing them, and that their parents would kill them to cover up the nightmarish conditions in their Beverly Hills home.

Prosecutors contended the brothers killed their parents with shotguns in 1989 to get access to their massive inheritance, and have repeatedly highlighted Erik and Lyle’s wild spending spree in the months that followed their parents’ deaths. .

“Neither piece of evidence adds to the allegations of abuse the jury already considered, yet found that the brothers planned, then executed that plan to kill their abusive father and complicit mother,” Ryan wrote. “The court finds that these two pieces of evidence presented here would have not have resulted in a hung jury nor in the conviction of a lesser instructed offense.”

Ryan agreed with Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman that the petition should not grant the brothers a new trial because the abuse evidence would not have changed the fact that the brothers planned and carried out the execution-style killings in the family living room.

Ryan wrote the new evidence would not have resulted in the trial court proceeding differently because the brothers could not show they experienced a fear of “imminent peril.”

A spokesperson for the group of more than 30 Menendez relatives who have been fighting for the brothers’ release did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office was not immediately available for comment.

The gruesome killings occurred after the brothers used cash to buy the shotguns and attacked their parents while they watched a movie in the family living room.

Prosecutors said Jose Menendez was struck five times with shotgun blasts, including in the back of the head, and Kitty Menendez crawled on the floor wounded before the brothers reloaded and fired a final, fatal blast.

The petition rejected this week was one of three paths the Menendez legal team has pursued in seeking freedom for the brothers. Another judge earlier this year resentenced them to 50 years to life for the murders, making them eligible for parole after they were originally sentenced to life in prison.

Both were denied release at their first parole hearing, but could end up before the state panel again in as soon as 18 months. Clemency petitions are also still pending before Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The first trial ended with hung juries for each brother. In the second, allegations of abuse and supporting testimonies were restricted, and Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder in March 1996.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s deployment of U.S. military troops to Los Angeles during immigration raids earlier this year was illegal.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer found the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which limited the use of the military for law enforcement purposes. He stayed his ruling to give the administration a chance to appeal.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into service in other cities across the country … thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” Breyer wrote.

The ruling could have implications beyond Los Angeles.

Trump, who sent roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June in a move that was opposed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, issued an executive order declaring a public safety emergency in D.C. The order invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act that places the Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.

In June, Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he mobilized thousands of California National Guard members against the state’s wishes.

In a 36-page decision, Breyer wrote that Trump’s actions “were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals paused that court order, allowing the troops to remain in Los Angeles while the case plays out in federal court. The appellate court found the president had broad, though not “unreviewable,” authority to deploy the military in American cities.

In his Tuesday ruling Breyer added: “The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Copyrighted books can be used to train artificial intelligence models without authors’ consent, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The decision marked a major victory for San Francisco startup Anthropic, which trained its AI assistant Claude using copyrighted books. The company, started by former OpenAI employees and backed by Amazon, was sued by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace in August.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of purchased books was “exceedingly transformative and was a fair use” but the company may have broken the law by using pirated books. Alsup ordered a trial in December to determine damages, which can reach up to $150,000 per case of willful copyright infringement.

“If someone were to read all the modern-day classics because of their exceptional expression, memorize them, and then emulate a blend of their best writing, would that violate the Copyright Act? Of course not,” the ruling reads.

“The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train [large language models] to generate new text was quintessentially transformative. Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”

Anthropic pirated more than 7 million books from Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online libraries containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted books, to train its large language models, according to Alsup. As the company started to become “not so gung ho” about pirating “for legal reasons,” it brought on Tom Turvey from Google to obtain “all the books in the world” but still avoid “legal/practice/business slog.”

While Turvey initially inquired into licensing agreements with two major publishers, he eventually decided to purchase millions of print copies in bulk. The company then proceeded to strip the books’ bindings, cut their pages and scan them into digital and machine-readable forms, according to the decision.

Though the plaintiffs took issue with Anthropic making digital copies, Alsup ruled that this practice also falls under fair use: “The mere conversion of a print book to a digital file to save space and enable searchability was transformative for that reason alone,” he wrote.

Anthropic later purchasing books that it initially pirated did not absolve the company, but it may impact the extent of statutory damages, Alsup said.

This decision comes as Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures are involved in their own lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Midjourney, which the studios allege trained its image generation models on their copyrighted materials and may set an important precedent.