We’ve apparently reached the point in the ongoing decay of the American empire where all it takes to get a pair of criminal defendants resentenced is for a Netflix showrunner to make a factually dubious drama about the crime that got them sent to prison, for a bunch of randos to sign an online petition, and for a reality TV star who got famous from a sex tape to champion the cause. Throw in a po-faced, progressive district attorney in a tough re-election fight (L.A. county’s George Gascón), and presto: Erik and Lyle Menendez, sentenced to prison in 1996 for shooting their parents to death, could very well walk free soon.
Assuming that a judge agrees with prosecutors’ request for the resentencing, that is. If that’s the case, then a Netflix series, makeup-hawking influencers, and the hive mind of the Internet will have been able to do what criminal defense attorneys could not.
Given that the Menendez brothers’ story is unfolding in the communist republic of Californiastan, I can’t say I’m completely surprised. Importantly, I’m not expressing an opinion here one way or the other on the merits of the potential resentencing the brothers, the prospects for which got a boost following the latest installment of the Monsters anthology on Netflix (from a creator who kind of strikes me as a little bit of a sociopath). Rather, what I care about is the motivation surrounding why this is all being done. It is, after all, possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Call me crazy, but I think we should prefer a system of jurisprudence that doesn’t turn one way or the other according to the madness of crowds. Because the more that random busybodies weigh in and bring online mobs to bear on this or that legal case, and the system actually responds to all that, it actually risks chipping away at the structure of the whole thing. In other words, the perception of fairness is also just as important as actual fairness (Lady Justice with her blindfold and all). This isn’t just my opinion, by the way; read this commentary published in The Huffington Post, of all places, about the risks of letting pop culture have a say in the legal system.
Gascón can insist all he wants that he’s been looking at the Menendez case for something like a year. If you believe that, then it’s simply a coincidence that in the heat of an election that he might well lose, and in the wake of a sensationalized Netflix drama about the case that shot to #1 worldwide and roused supporters of the Menendez brothers, he chose this moment to call a press conference and announce his support of quite possibly handing two get-out-of-jail free cards to the brothers. They don’t call it the court of public opinion for nothing.
