Olivia
Online
Helen Tona
@Helz_86_
Melbourne, Victoria
Joined September 2011
317 Following
149 Followers
3.9K Posts
https://t.co/PZla5YVE2w
We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of Robert Rand.
For decades, Rob dedicated himself to documenting the Menendez brothers’ case with extraordinary care, integrity, and compassion.
#JusticeForErikAndLyle
We send our deepest condolences to Nathan's family and the broader football community ❤️
8 years ago today 🩵 #JusticeForErikAndLyle
So incredibly sad.
My generation.
Gone too soon.
Wisdom from a man who was coming to terms with his own mortality.
Take the 2 minutes and 50 seconds to watch this.
Incredible. What a great human being.
I can’t believe they’re all gone 💔
Nadal called for Djokovic’s deportation in 2022 and gloated over it hyping the hate media against him, Novak Djokovic forgives him and takes the higher road as always.
GOAT FOR A REASON. 🐐
Novak Djokovic has nothing to prove.
The greatest there was.
The greatest there is.
The greatest there will ever be. 🐐
UNBELIEVABLE ‼️
Novak Djokovic will face Carlos Alcaraz in the #AO26 Final after playing out this EPIC with Jannik Sinner
@wwos • @espn • @tntsports • @wowowtennis • #AO26
Today marks the 9th anniversary of Lyle’s FB page! Lyle wants to share his deepest gratitude for all your support along the way. What a journey! It’s amazing to look back and see just how far things have come since 2017.
Freedom is coming!
Thnx 4 for being part of the story!
Lyle looks so sweet in this photo. Both of kind-hearted brothers deserved to be happy, but it's still possible. We will continue fighting for their freedom.
#JusticeForErikAndLyle
#FreeTheMenendezBrothers
There are only 2 days left until his birthday.🎂
"I moved well, and when I do, I usually win."🎾 - Lyle Menendez
#JusticeForErikAndLyle
#FreeTheMenendezBrothers
Countdown: 6 days until the best brother in the world’s birthday."
#JusticeForErikAndLyle
#FreeTheMenendezBrothers
🧵 10 reasons people dismiss the Menendez brothers & why they’re wrong. This thread examines common claims alongside evidence, law & psychological realities. How this case is remembered shapes how we understand abuse, trauma & justice. Swipe to learn more!#JusticeForErikAndLyle
What The Menendez Brothers Parole Hearings Tell Us About Prison Discipline,
(Part 1)
By @ChandraBozelko
Editor’s note: Whatever you do or don’t think about the controversial and complex case of the Menendez Brothers, a look at their recent bid for parole opens the door to an examination of how well or poorly our systems of prison discipline presently work.
Witness LA - Erik and Lyle Menendez came before the California Board of Parole in individual hearings on August 21 and 22, respectively, just slightly over four months ago. Although the brothers faced two different parole boards, the outcomes were the same. Both were denied a chance to go home under supervision — for now.
Once impossible altogether, because the brothers were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for killing their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, these hearings before California’s Board of Parole were scheduled after a ruling was handed down this past spring by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic, who reduced the brothers’ sentences from life, to 50 years to life, a reduction that immediately made the brothers eligible for what is known as discretionary release.
While not the only factor, a major factor in each of the decisions to deny the brothers parole were their disciplinary records inside prison.
Disciplinary records are hardy ever adversarially tested
Over 50 years ago, in the Supreme Court case known as Wolff v. McDonnell, an inmate of the Nebraska State Penitentiary filed a class action lawsuit, on behalf of himself and his fellow inmates, alleging that The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The nation’s highest court disagreed. Writing for the six-Justice majority, Justice Byron White granted inmates a few procedural protections, including the following: written notice of charges at least 24 hours before a hearing, a written statement of the evidence against them, and the reasons for disciplinary action.
Justice White also ruled that those incarcerated must be allowed a hearing with an opportunity to present their own evidence and call witnesses (unless the calling of witnesses endangers institutional safety).
The Wolff decision may seem reasonable, but those ���rights” are meaningless in prison where an inmate cannot control whether another inmate can attend a hearing or whether they will be retaliated against.
To make matters worse, the Wolff decision specifically carved away the right to confront or cross-examine adverse witnesses — namely the people accusing them — and the right to counsel.
In other words, the Wolff ruling so limited due process rights for prisoners that those constitutional rights were almost non-existent.
Eleven years after Wolff, the Supreme Court diminished prisoner protections still further:
Instead of using the usual standard of evidence in civil court matters — “a preponderance of evidence”— the Court said that only “some evidence” is required to sustain an individual’s prison disciplinary findings.
This standard of evidence, or lack thereof, gets woven into virtually every decision regarding whether or not to parole a person.
It underpins the discipline system that is often the gateway to the controversial use of solitary confinement. In addition, disciplinary records determine where prisoners reside within prisons, and can render him or her ineligible for certain rehabilitative programming so little to no evidence against a prisoner is enough to upend his or her life.
Over 50 years ago, in the Supreme Court case known as Wolff v. McDonnell, an inmate of the Nebraska State Penitentiary filed a class action lawsuit, on behalf of himself and his fellow inmates, alleging that The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services violated the due process Clause of the 14 Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The nation’s highest court disagreed. Writing for the six-Justice majority, Justice Byron White granted inmates a few procedural protections, including the following: written notice of charges at least 24 hours before a hearing, a written statement of the evidence against them, and the reasons for disciplinary action.
Justice White also ruled that those incarcerated must be allowed a hearing with an opportunity to present their own evidence and call witnesses (unless the calling of witnesses endangers institutional safety).
The Wolff decision may seem reasonable, but those “rights” are meaningless in prison where an inmate cannot control whether another inmate can attend a hearing or whether they will be retaliated against.
To make matters worse, the Wolff decision specifically carved away the right to confront or cross-examine adverse witnesses — namely the people accusing them — and the right to counsel.
In other words, the Wolff ruling so limited due process rights for prisoners that those constitutional rights were almost non-existent.
Eleven years after Wolff, the Supreme Court diminished prisoner protections still further:
Instead of using the usual standard of evidence in civil court matters — “a preponderance of evidence”— the Court said that only “some evidence” is required to sustain an individual’s prison disciplinary findings.
This standard of evidence, or lack thereof, gets woven into virtually every decision whether or not to parole a person. It underpins the same discipline system that is also often the gateway to the controversial use of solitary confinement. Disciplinary records determine where prisoners reside within prisons, and can render him or her ineligible for certain rehabilitative programming so little to no evidence against a prisoner is enough to upend his or her life.
These same inexact records can also be the difference between life and death, when prosecutors present them as aggravating factors in the penalty phase of a death penalty case.
The Write-up problem
Nearly a decade ago, in 2016, the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted a Survey of Prison Inmates, compiling what is still the most recent national “cross-sectional” survey of people in state prisons and federal lock-ups.
In the 2016 survey, more than half (53%) of those reported being written up or found responsible for at least one rule violation in the previous year alone.
Nine percent (9%) of those surveyed reported receiving a “major” violation during the period surveyed, meaning they’d been written up for the most serious disciplinary offenses, as opposed to minor write-ups for more trivial transgressions.
Yet, as it turned out, these write-ups didn’t necessarily mean the people who were on the receiving end of the paperwork broke any rules.
About 50% of major discipline reports are “bogus,” according to Daniel Manville, Clinical Professor of Law at Michigan State University, author of the Disciplinary Self-Help Litigation Manual, a book that helps prisoners fight disciplinary charges that result in their rights being curtailed. According to Manville’s research, minor discipline reports are even more likely to be false.
And the CDCR is quite aware of this problematic issue, reported journalist Sam Levin for The Guardian in April 2025.
Approximately 6000 drug tests yielded false positives between April and July 2024 in California correctional facilities, reported Levin. And that’s 6000 admittedly false disciplinary charges, ones that CDCR has yet to rectify.
California is not alone with this problem. According to a 2023 report released by the Office of Inspector General of New York State, over 2000 prisoners in New York facilities were punished for false drug test”
Free-world offenses v. prison offenses
Even when incarcerated people break the rules of rule breaking, prison offenses aren’t at all the same as “free world” offenses:
Keeping too much toilet paper in one’s cell is a violation. (Each person gets only two rolls. The excess is contraband). Similar rules prohibit sitting on another inmate’s bed. Walking too slowly can get someone written up.
Obviously, having no rules at all, defeats the purpose of rehabilitation. But the rules aren’t just about safety and order. Disciplinary reports have become a measuring stick for prisoner performance, as the Menendez parole hearings demonstrated. They feature so prominently in these hearings because correctional facilities lack a method to measure or quantify rehabilitation, other than recidivism rates.
And those assessments come too late.
https://t.co/HcC6ahBH6r
----------------
The Menendez Brothers: How discipline plays an outsized role in CA parole decisions
(Part 2)
While hopes were high for the Menendezes as they headed into their parole hearings, their disciplinary records were destined to pose a problem for each of the brothers.
Historically, California has one of the lowest parole rates in the nation. In 2024, only 1154 out of 8001 candidates—or 14.4 percent—were approved. As 2025 comes to an end, the state’s Board of Parole Hearings has approved only 11% of aspiring parolees in 2025.
For comparison, eight of the 29 states with available data had parole approval rates above 50 percent, according to the Prison Policy Initiative and only three other states — Alabama, Maryland and South Carolina — had grant rates below 20 percent for 2022, a year when 13.9 percent of California petitions were granted.
Cracking the code
The best predictor of whether someone will be granted parole in California is the results of the Comprehensive Risk Assessment (CRA), a clinical evaluation completed by a forensic psychologist employed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR), who rates an inmate at low, moderate, or high risk of reoffending.
These Forensic Assessment Division psychologists are often known to put a great deal of weight on someone’s disciplinary history when assessing the likelihood of future violence. Thus, people with better histories are more likely to receive a low CRA score.
Unsurprisingly, people with low CRA ratings are more likely to make parole. Both of the Menendez brothers scored as moderate risk of future violence, not the more desirable, low ratings, so each went into the hearings at a slight disadvantage.
CRA ratings, however, are not the only important markers that affect parole.
Disciplinary reports are one of the variables that can mitigate or erase the advantage of a low CRA rating. The Board usually denies release to people with a disciplinary report in the previous six years regardless of their CRA score.
For her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, biostatistician Jenny Hong examined 35,105 transcripts of parole hearings that occurred between 2007 and 2019. Only about 1% of candidates with recent discipline and moderate/high CRA scores make parole.
Discipline more common in high security prisons
Another issue when it comes to CRA scores, is the fact that it is much more difficult for people housed in higher security prisons to make parole because discipline is meted out more often in these settings.
In the case of the Menendez brothers, they are both currently housed at Donovan Correctional Institution. Lyle has been there since 2018 and Erik since 2013. Before that Lyle was at Mule Creek and Erik was housed at Folsom. Mule Creek used to be a Special Needs Yard, a special housing unit for prisoners at risk in the general population. Now it is developing a reputation as one of the worst in California’s correctional constellation. In 2025, two women were murdered by their husbands during conjugal visits within months of each other.
The authors of the Department of Justice’s 2019 Federal Correctional Facilities study, which is one of the few studies on prison discipline, found that high-security facilities experience violent incidents (e.g., assaults on staff or inmates) up to 2-3 times more often than medium-or low-security prisons.
This pattern filters down to even low-level infractions. Part of the issue is that high-security prisons issue disciplinary reports for all violations, including non-violence-related ones, at a rate that is 1.5 times more often than violations are given at medium-security facilities, and over twice the rate as that of low-security prisons.
Simply put, the harsher the prison, the more likely a prisoner is to get in trouble.
That each brother spent decades in these high security environments is an important context to their behavioral histories. Sometimes people in prison break the rules to feel safer.
For instance, although Lyle lived in more protected housing, he admitted that he engineered a system whereby his family mailed in jeans and sweatpants to other inmates to “get along” with the other men.
It’s easy to assume that the elevated rates of discipline reflect men convicted of more serious crimes’ inability to behave but that’s not necessarily true. Essentially, violence contributes to a cycle of discipline where heightened tensions lead to more sanctions for everyone.
https://t.co/IOATjV2qG5
(Chandra Bozelko covers the criminal justice system. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee and serves as Vice President of Board of the New York Press Club. She won the 2021 Sigma Delta Chi award for Online Column Writing.)
News Analysis : High-Profile Losses Tarnish Reputation of L.A. D.A.’s Office : Prosecutors win most cases, but failures like Menendez and McMartin invite criticism of tactics
LA Times (3.6.94) - The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office doesn’t just help solve mysteries anymore. It has become one. When no one’s watching, the office racks up convictions in four trials out of five. But when everyone’s watching, the office looks like a lightweight, losing far more high-publicity cases than it wins. Consider its poor track record in some of the most klieg-lighted cases of the last decade: “Twilight Zone,” McMartin, King, Denny, Menendez.
Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti and his top aides say it is unfair to evaluate the office, which prosecutes more than 50,000 felonies a year, on the basis of a handful of cases that fascinated the media over a decade. But these few failures in the spotlight leave lasting impressions and have diminished public confidence in an important crime-fighting institution. “People are poking fun at us,” Garcetti acknowledged last week during a meeting with his deputies. And that makes some career prosecutors angry.
“We’re a laughingstock,” said veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. Sterling Norris, who ran for district attorney in 1992. Referring to the Rodney G. King and Reginald O. Denny beating trials and the Lyle and Erik Menendez case, he said: “It’s not often the D.A. can burn down half the city, alienate half the city, then turn around and lose a major murder case.”
“We do win most of our trials,” said Pamela Bozanich, the lead prosecutor in the Menendez trial, which ended in January with juries unable to reach verdicts. “We’re supposed to.” Indeed, each year for more than a decade, the district attorney’s office has won convictions of the charged or lesser offenses in 75% to 80% of its 2,500 or so felony trials. The vast majority of felony cases are settled through plea negotiations.
* It doesn’t always tap the best prosecutors available. Some prosecutors and a judge went so far as to suggest that elected district attorneys do not want to give their most talented subordinates public platforms from which to launch political careers. The three most recently elected district attorneys, Garcetti, Ira Reiner and Robert Philibosian, reject that suggestion.
* Prosecutors assigned to high-profile cases are not given adequate support. Prosecutors are typically viewed by the public as having the awesome power of the state behind them. But their resources are sometimes limited compared to expensive defense attorneys on these cases. While preparing for the Menendez triale attorneys in the case had the proceeds from a multimillion-dollar estate.
* Elected district attorneys may have gotten carried away by emotions or politics and charged defendants with more crimes than they could prove. When this kind of overcharging occurs in response to public pressure, as some believe it did in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case and in the Denny beating case, a backlash can occur, resulting in a win for the defense and a loss of faith in the prosecutor’s office.
In the Menendez case, for example, the two men who admitted shotgunning their parents to death offered an excuse that resonated with many jurors: They had been sexually abused by their parents. But some observers said prosecutors could have overcome the defense’s portrait of the men as victims if they had shucked their restraint and shouted: So what?“
Can the fact that something terrible has been done to you justify premeditated murder? That’s the issue that had to be argued,” said Harland Braun, a former deputy district attorney who has become a successful defense lawyer. “Death Rows are loaded with people with backgrounds as bad as Erik Menendez. . . . We convict them because it’s necessary to protect society.”
Superior Court Judge James Albracht said he believes a more dramatic example of overcharging was the McMartin Pre-School case, in which seven nursery school owners and teachers were accused in 1983 of molesting scores of preschoolers and held without bail, or on extremely high bail, for years. Ultimately, all were let go by the district attorney or by juries when it was shown that many of the alleged victims had been coached into making incriminating statements that could not be corroborated.
In an office in which many lawyers have 20 or more years experience, the prosecutors assigned to most of these cases were relatively inexperienced.Some speculate that elected district attorneys are loath to appoint lawyers of long tenure and proven accomplishment for fear that, once loosed in front of cameras, these lawyers might become well enough known to challenge the district attorney at the polls.
The prosecutors who secured the only two high-publicity victories for the district attorney’s office during the last decade did not get other high-publicity cases to try. William Hodgman, who successfully prosecuted savings and loan operator Charles H. Keating Jr. for defrauding small investors, has become a key administrator. P. Philip Halpin, who in 1989 prosecuted Richard Ramirez of the “Night Stalker” serial murders, works in a district attorney’s branch office in San Fernando, deciding what charges to bring in cases filed there.
“If you’re really, really good, that may hold you back,” said Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a leading defense attorney who was the No. 3 executive in the district attorney’s office from 1978 to 1981. “Politically . . . you’re a threat.”
Cochran and many others, who did not want to be identified, also said district attorneys have placed too much emphasis on showcasing the office’s ethnic and gender diversity in high-profile cases, rather than simply appointing the toughest prosecutors available. In the McMartin, Denny, Menendez and “Twilight Zone” cases, they noted, the lead prosecutors were women; in King, the lead prosecutor was a black man.
“Sometimes this desire for political correctness doesn’t put your absolute best team forward,” Cochran said.Garcetti, Reiner and Philibosian disputed these assessments, saying they chose only the most qualified prosecutors available, then supervised them closely.
Several of the prosecutors who were selected said that despite the involvement of the head of the office in their cases, they got very little in the way of investigative, legal research or clerical support, detracting from their ability to fully dedicate themselves to their courtroom strategies.
“I learned WordPerfect during the trial,” said Bozanich, the 14-year veteran who tried the Menendez case. “I turned in a motion I typed myself and the judge exploded, so I learned spellcheck. . . . Our subpoenas were handwritten or typed by me.”
In the Menendez case, because jurors could not agree on a verdict, the district attorney’s office will get to try again. For its upcoming effort, Garcetti has switched prosecutors, appointing a new team led by David Conn, a 15-year veteran who won convictions in the so-called “Cotton Club” murder of theater impresario Roy Radin. He also named Carol Najera, a nine-year veteran. Najera’s appointment set off grumblings that the office might take another drubbing. In a speech to deputies a week ago, Garcetti exhorted them to “get behind” the new team. Then, in almost the next breath, he seemed aware of the worrying when he undercut Najera. “David Conn,” he said, “is the person assigned to the case. He will be handling 95% of the case. He asked for assistance. He asked that Carol (Najera) be assigned to the case. . . . I said, ‘Yes, she will be a fine assistant for Dave.’ ”
https://t.co/VJhbAUcBw1
This is Lyle, the guy who created a stuffed animal family for his girlfriend.
#JusticeForErikAndLyle
#FreeTheMenendezBrothers
#MenendezBrothers 🧵
I appreciate all the attention and accolades that I've received over the past year which have led to an explosion of sales of the Updated Edition of "The Menendez Murders." But even though there has been been major progress in the case with the resentencing last May and the parole hearings in August, the #MenendezBrothers' story will not be over until Erik and Lyle Menendez are released and sent home to their family after 35 years and seven months of incarceration.
There are people who commit horrible crimes against strangers in California and some of them are out of prison in 15 or 20 years. This was a case of domestic violence and a complex family tragedy. The second Menendez trial was a complete miscarriage of justice when the jury was not allowed to hear the detailed evidence of family history and abuse that had been the heart of the defense case in the first trial.
The jury was allowed to learn that evidence in the penalty phase of the second trial where jurors had to decide between the death penalty and life without parole. Several second trial jurors told me, off the record, that they would't have voted for murder in the guilt phase of the Menendez retrial if they had heard that evidence of abuse earlier.
#JusticeForErikandLyle
#JusticeforRoy
https://t.co/6v81WmHNaC
Last Seen Users on Sotwe
عائله
Seen from Ireland
Teresa Carvalho 🍓 
Seen from Portugal
mehmet sibel çift
Seen from Turkey
Boys & BBC ♠️
Seen from Turkey
GrandpasAndSeniors
Seen from Brazil
Quik10
Seen from Vietnam
After Dark TV
Seen from Turkey
bbc connoisseur
نياك القحاب.و الطاطات
Seen from Algeria
ℱUℛℛᎽ ᎶᎯᎽ +18
Seen from Guatemala
Most Popular Users
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
241.6M followers
Barack Obama
@barackobama
119M followers
Cristiano Ronaldo
@cristiano
114.1M followers
Donald J. Trump
@realdonaldtrump
111.8M followers
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
107.2M followers
Rihanna
@rihanna
98.7M followers
NASA
@nasa
92.4M followers
Justin Bieber
@justinbieber
91.8M followers
KATY PERRY
@katyperry
89.8M followers
Taylor Swift
@taylorswift13
83.8M followers
Lady Gaga
@ladygaga
75.3M followers
Virat Kohli
@imvkohli
73.1M followers
Kim Kardashian
@kimkardashian
70.8M followers
YouTube
@youtube
68.8M followers
Neymar Jr
@neymarjr
66.1M followers
Bill Gates
@billgates
65M followers
Selena Gomez
@selenagomez
62.9M followers
The Ellen Show
@theellenshow
62.3M followers
CNN
@cnn
61.8M followers
X
@x
60.7M followers
✨
⭐
💫