L.A. County District Attorney Supports Erik and Lyle Menendez's Request for Clemency from Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón supports Erik and Lyle Menendez’s request for clemency from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gascón said on Wednesday, Oct. 20.

Erik, 53, and Lyle, 56, are serving life sentences without parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. 

“I strongly support clemency for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are currently serving sentences of life without possibility of parole,” Gascón wrote in a press release. “They have respectively served 34 years and have continued their educations and worked to create new programs to support the rehabilitation of fellow inmates.”

The support comes after Erik and Lyle’s legal team asked for clemency on Monday, Oct. 28. The request now goes to Newsom, 57, for consideration, per the release.

Gascón has previously shown support for the Menendez brothers’ efforts to be resentenced, telling PEOPLE in an exclusive interview on Oct. 22 that he doesn’t believe they are a danger to society.

“Based on everything that I know, I don’t believe that they are,” he said. “Quite frankly, they probably haven’t been for a very long time, if they ever were. I think this is not like they were going around killing people or robbing people on the street.”

On Oct. 25, Gascón announced that his office would ask the Los Angeles Superior Court judge to resentence Lyle and Erik to 50 years to life. He pointed out that since they were younger than 26 when they killed their parents, they were “youthful offenders” eligible for parole.

Erik was 18 and Lyle was 21 when they shot and killed their parents with 12-gauge shotguns in the den of their Beverly Hills, Calif., home on Aug. 20, 1989. The brothers alleged that the murders came after Jose, the chief operating officer of RCA Records, sexually abused them for years — abuse that they claimed their mother, a former pageant queen, ignored.

“They have been in prison for nearly 35 years,” Gascón told PEOPLE of the brothers. “I believe they have paid their debt to society.” In their time in prison, he said, “they engaged in a different journey—a journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation.”

A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 11, according to Wednesday’s press release.