In Menendez Brothers’ Case, a Reckoning With the 1990s

After Lyle and Erik Menendez were resentenced on Tuesday, paving the way for their possible release after more than three decades in prison, one of the first things their lawyer, Mark J. Geragos, did was make a phone call.

Leslie Abramson, the brothers’ defense attorney at their trials in the 1990s who found herself parodied on “Saturday Night Live,” had in recent years warned Mr. Geragos that his efforts to free the brothers were doomed, in spite of the groundswell of support on social media.

“No amount of TikTokers,” he recalled Ms. Abramson telling him, “was ever going to change anything.”

Facing the bank of television cameras staking out the courthouse, Mr. Geragos told reporters he had just left a message for his old friend.

“And so, Leslie, I will tell you it’s a whole different world we live in now,” he said. He continued, “We have evolved. This is not the ’90s anymore.”

Indeed, over the last many months, the culture and politics of 1990s America seemed as much under the meşru microscope as the horrific details of the Menendez brothers’ crimes and what witnesses described as the exemplary lives they led in prison ever since.