Category: US

The Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday he will ask the court Friday for resentencing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, decades after the brothers were sentenced to life without parole for the 1989 killings of their parents in Beverly Hills. If the judge accepts his recommendation, the brothers would be immediately eligible for parole, he said. 

Gascón held a news conference to announce his decision following growing calls to consider resentencing for the brothers, who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole after they were convicted of first-degree murder in the slayings of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez. 

“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said. 

He said will ask the judge to consider resentencing the brothers to 50 years to life. Because they committed the crimes when they were under the age of 26 years old, they would be eligible for parole, he said. Gascón said the final decision will be made by the judge, and then it would go before a parole board, which will determine if the brothers should be released. 

He said his final decision was made an hour before the news conference.

Gascón said earlier this month that his office had been looking into the Menendez brothers’ case for about a year. The focus of the case has been on why the brothers killed their parents. 

During their highly publicized first trial in 1993, prosecutors argued that the murders were committed out of greed, while defense attorneys said the killings were done in self-defense. The brothers admitted they killed their parents but claimed that they had been sexually, emotionally and physically abused by them. Prosecutors suggested those claims were false. A mistrial was declared, and in a second trial, what defense attorneys called evidence of abuse was excluded. 

In May 2023, the brothers’ appellate attorney, Cliff Gardner, filed a habeas petition to challenge the convictions. The petition cited a 1988 letter from Erik Menendez to a cousin where he detailed alleged abuse by his father as new evidence. 

Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, has also alleged that he was abused by José Menendez, who was an executive at RCA Records, where the band had a recording contract. Gardner has said these circumstances mean the brothers should have been convicted of first-degree manslaughter, not murder, and should have received shorter sentences that would have seen them released from prison years ago. 

Two recent high-profile Netflix projects have brought renewed attention to the brothers’ case. Gascón said this has helped speed the decision-making process. Some family members have also called for the brothers to be freed. But Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, objected, arguing in a court filing: “The ‘new evidence’ Gascón relies on cannot legally justify overturning the murder convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who meticulously planned and executed the cold-blooded murders of both their parents.”

If you’re a man in the Philadelphia area who’s inclined to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris but still not entirely sold on the idea, her team hopes you’ll listen to Duke, a Southwest Philadelphia resident and star of “She Can Do It,” a 30-second ad that begins airing on broadcast and cable television stations in the Philadelphia area on Thursday.

Sitting on a stoop, Duke tells someone off camera, “When I look at Kamala, I look at my aunt. I mean, we’ve got this Black lady, strong, who stands on business, who means what she says, is relatable. I see the empathy, that’s just, like, in their heart, the nature of a female.”

As footage of Harris flashes on screen, he adds: “She shows a lot of empathy when she speaks. Her actions — Kamala’s strong, she’s powerful. She stern, she means everything that she says. This November, I’m standing with Kamala.”

The ad is set to air during local broadcasts of Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball games, and during local cable ad breaks during TNT coverage of NBA games and its popular “Inside the NBA” pregame show, as well as on networks popular with Black viewers, including BET, OWN, and VH1. The ad is part of an ongoing $370 million national ad campaign that stretches from Labor Day to Election Day.

The message is clearly tailored to reach Black men in Pennsylvania — and any other man who may be wary of supporting a woman as the next president. (The Harris campaign officially calls them “persuadable voters.”) The spot comes as Harris trails former President Donald Trump among men by double digits in some recent polls and amid signs he’s chipping away at traditionally strong support for the Democratic Party among Black voters. Failure to sustain high levels of minority voter support in Pennsylvania could cost Harris the state if she can’t make up those losses with other groups.

But in a nod to the realities of modern media consumption and political advertising, the ad first surfaced on streaming media. During the Fox telecast of the Philadelphia Eagles – New York Giants NFL game last Sunday, certain viewers streaming the game on Hulu spotted the message — an example of how digital video advertising can be targeted, in this case to male viewers watching the game in the Philadelphia area. That’s how a traveling CBS News correspondent first spotted the ad — watching the game on the Hulu app Sunday afternoon while riding a train into Philadelphia.

The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a journalism trade publication reported Wednesday.

Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview that she resigned because the Times was remaining silent on the contest in “dangerous times.”

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

In a post on the social media platform X that did not directly mention the resignation, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong said the board was asked to do a factual analysis of the policies of Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump during their time at the White House.

Additionally, “The board was asked to provide (its) understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years,” he wrote. “In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.”

Soon-Shiong, who bought the paper in 2018, said the board “chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”

Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that the board had intended to endorse Harris and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial.

A LA Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

The LA Times Guild Unit Council & Bargaining Committee said it was “deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race.”

“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the guild said in a statement. “We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our members.”

Trump’s campaign jumped on Garza’s departure, saying the state’s largest newspaper had declined to endorse the Democratic ticket after backing Harris in her previous races for U.S. Senate and state attorney general.

Her exit comes about 10 months after then-Executive Editor Kevin Merida left the paper in what was called a “mutually agreed” upon departure. At the time, the news organization said it had fallen well short of its digital subscriber goals and needed a revenue boost to sustain the newsroom and its digital operations.

In her CNN town hall Thursday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris said that she believes former President Donald Trump is a fascist.

Moderator Anderson Cooper posed the question to Harris, who responded, “Yes I do. Yes I do.”

“And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted,” Harris added. “Again, look at their careers, these are not people, I think with the exception of only Mike Pence, these are not politicians. These are career people who have served at the highest roles of national security. Who have served as generals in our military. Who are highly respected, talking about the person who will be commander in chief.”

Harris’ statement comes after former Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, the longest-serving chief of staff in the Trump administration, told the New York Times in an interview that Trump is “certainly an authoritarian” and “admires people who are dictators.”

Kelly also told the Times that while in office, Trump would also “occasionally” say that Adolf Hitler “did some good things, too.”

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly said Trump told him. “And of course, if you know history, again I think he’s lacking in that. If you know what history was all about, it would be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good.”

Of Kelly, Harris said that “he’s just putting out a 911 call to the American people to understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in the White House.” 

Apple and Goldman Sachs must pay more than $89 million over failures related to their joint Apple Card, federal financial regulators announced Wednesday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said the companies provided inadequate customer service and misrepresented transactions and card features to hundreds of thousands of Apple Card users.

“Apple and Goldman Sachs illegally sidestepped their legal obligations for Apple Card borrowers,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “Big Tech companies and big Wall Street firms should not behave as if they are exempt from federal law.”

The CFPB alleges that Apple failed to send tens of thousands of consumer disputes of transactions on their accounts to Goldman Sachs. When the tech company did share those reports with the investment bank, Goldman Sachs failed to follow federal requirements for investigating them, regulators said. 

Both companies also misled consumers about interest-free payment plans for Apple devices, the CFPB found. That lead customers to believe that they would qualify for interest-free payment when they used an Apple Card to buy iPhones and other Apple devices, according to the agency. 

Additionally, Goldman Sachs misled consumers about the application of some refunds, which led to their paying additional interest charges, the CFPB said.

In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, Apple took issue with the CFPB’s assessment of its conduct, while saying it is “committed to providing consumers with fair and transparent financial products.”

“Upon learning about these inadvertent issues years ago, Apple worked closely with Goldman Sachs to quickly address them and help impacted customers,” the company added. “While we strongly disagree with the CFPB’s characterization of Apple’s conduct, we have aligned with them on an agreement. We look forward to continuing to deliver a great experience for our Apple Card customers.”

Goldman Sachs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The order requires Apple to pay $25 million into the CFPB’s victims relief fund. Goldman Sachs must pay victims nearly $20 million, plus a $45 million civil penalty, according to the agency’s order. 

Chopra also said it is banning Goldman from offering another credit card geared to consumers “unless it can demonstrate that it can actually follow the law.” 

French-Polish director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States decades ago after admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old, will no longer face trial over an alleged assault of another minor after reaching a settlement, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The latest case against the director of “The Pianist,” which concerned an alleged sexual attack in 1973, had been due in civil court in Los Angeles next August, but has now been withdrawn, Polanski’s US attorney told Agence France-Presse.

The case was “settled in the summer to the parties’ mutual satisfaction and has now been formally dismissed,” Alexander Rufus-Isaacs said in an email.

The suit, filed last year, claimed Polanski took a then-teenager — named anonymously in filings as Jane Doe — to dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles in 1973.

He allegedly gave her tequila and, when she began to feel dizzy, drove her to his home, where he forced himself on her.

“She told him: ‘please don’t do this,’” the plaintiff’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, told reporters in March.

“She alleges that he ignored her pleas. She also alleges that defendant Polanski removed plaintiff’s clothes and he proceeded to sexually assault her, causing her tremendous physical, emotional pain and suffering.”

The civil suit, which sought unspecified damages, was filed in June 2023, just before the expiration of a California law that allowed for an extended window for claims against the alleged perpetrators of sexual crimes.

Court papers filed in California in July said a “conditional” accord had been reached.

Allred said in an email late Tuesday that “a settlement of claims was agreed to by the parties to their mutual satisfaction.”

CBS News has reached out to Allred and Rufus-Isaacs for further comment.  

Oscar-winner Polanski, now 91, is a divisive figure, with some in the movie world hailing his creative genius while others insist he was always a sexual predator.

Polanski admitted to the statutory rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer in a plea bargain in 1977 to avoid a trial on more serious charges.

But he fled to France the following year, after serving 42 days in jail, when it appeared a judge was reconsidering his release.

Geimer has subsequently defended Polanski and was photographed with him last year.

A French court in May acquitted Polanski of defaming British actor Charlotte Lewis after she accused him of raping her when she was a teenager.

The director has always denied wrongdoing.