Menendez brothers: When is someone convicted of murder considered rehabilitated?

After months of delays, Erik and Lyle Menendez may be one step closer to learning if they'll be free.

After months of delays, Erik and Lyle Menendez may be one step closer to learning if they'll be free.

The brothers have each spent more than three decades in prison for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, and they’ve been waiting since October to be heard on a prosecutor’s recommendation that their sentences of life without the possibility of parole be reduced to 50 years to life.

That recommendation, if approved by Los Angeles County Superior Judge Michael Jesic after what is expected to be two days of hearings beginning Tuesday, would make Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, eligible for parole immediately.

A decision on the matter has been hamstrung by forces inside and outside the courtroom. Those delays have helped fuel an increasingly bitter debate over a question at the heart of the criminal justice system: What does someone convicted of first-degree murder have to do to show they’ve been rehabilitated?

George Gascón, the former Los Angeles County district attorney who recommended that the brothers be resentenced, believed that they had been exceptional inmates.