LA County prosecutor details where he stands on Menendez brothers resentencing

LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Monday that his office is ready to move forward with a resentencing hearing in the decades-old Menendez brothers murder case and offered details about where he stands on the matter.

At a morning news conference, Hochman said his office is prepared to move ahead with the hearing for the court's initiation of resentencing, which could result in a change to the life prison sentences being served by Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, Menendez for the 1989 shotgun shooting deaths of their parents in the family's Beverly Hills mansion.

Hochman, however, added that he will ask the court to withdraw his predecessor's motion on resentencing. In October, then-District Attorney George Gascón recommended the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole.

Hochman called his predecessor's recommendation a “desperate political move.”

Hochman said his office has reviewed thousands of pages of trial transcripts from the brothers' two trials, prison records, hours of videotaped trial testimony, evidence and more to arrive at the decision.

"We are prepared to go forward with the court's initiated resentencing proceedings and look forward to a hearing on that motion," Hochman said Monday. "However, we are asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney's motion for resentencing because we believe that there are legitimate reasons in the interest of justice."

The resentencing hearing is scheduled for March 20 and 21 in Van Nuys, but could be delayed.

"This is classic good news-bad news for the Menendez brothers," said NBCLA legal analyst Royal Oakes. "The good news is only a possibility. They have to convince the court that they've abandoned all of their lies.

"The bad news is devastating. The DA before Hochman was all in favor of letting them out. He pointed out, it's been a long time. They were victims of abuse. They have been perfect model prisoners. They have been rehabilitated. Now that Hochman is in, there's no longer unequivocal support by the district attorney."

The prosecutor's office issued a lengthy statement, explaining the move to withdraw Gascón's resentencing motion and move forward with the court-initiated hearing on resentencing.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NBCLA (@nbcla)

"The basis for that request is that the prior motion did not examine or consider whether the Menendez brothers have exhibited full insight and taken complete responsibility for their crimes by continuing for the past over 30 years to lie about their claims of self-defense, that is, their fear that their mother and father were going to kill them the night of Aug. 20, 1989, justifying the brutal murders of their parents with shotgun blasts through the back of their father’s head, a point-blank blast through their mother’s face, and shots to their kneecaps to stage it as a Mafia killing," Hochman said. "As a full examination of the record reveals, the Menendez brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense as well as suborned perjury and attempted to suborn perjury by their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently raping Lyle’s girlfriend, their mother poisoning the family, and their attempt to get a handgun the day before the murders.

“The Court must consider such lack of full insight and lack of acceptance of responsibility for their murderous actions in deciding whether the Menendez brothers pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community."

Hochman was asked whether his announcement makes the brother's path to freedom more difficult.

"At that hearing, the Menendez (brothers) are going to have to show that they've exhibited full insight and completely accepted responsibility for the entire breadth of their criminal actions and all the lies that they had people tell on their behalf or tried to have people tell on their behalf," Hochman said.

The Justice for Erik and Lyle Coalition, a family-led group, released a statement criticizing Hochman's requirements of the brothers.

"District Attorney Hochman made it clear today he is holding Erik, Lyle, and our family hostage," the coalition said. "He appears fixated on their trauma-driven response to the killings in 1989 with blinders on to the fact they were repeatedly abused, feared for their lives, and have atoned for their actions. How many times do we have to hear the same attempts to bury who they are today and rip us back to that painful time?

"Let’s be clear: Erik and Lyle are not the same young boys they were more than 30 years ago. They have apologized for their actions, which were the results of Jose’s sexual abuse and Kitty’s enablement. They have apologized for the horrific actions they took. They have apologized to us. And, they have demonstrated their atonement through actions that have helped improve countless lives. Yet, DA Hochman is effectively asking for them to publicly apologize to a checklist of actions they took in a state of shock and fear."

The brothers' attorney, Mark Geragos, characterized Hochman’s announcement as irrelevant to what happens during the resentencing hearing.

"He's basically admitted that the judge still has jurisdiction over the resentencing," Geragos said. "It's not a setback at all. In fact, I think the it's really kind of the like I said, the last gasp of an irrelevant actor in this. The focus today was to try and focus back on things that were litigated 35 years ago. That's not what rehabilitation is all about.

Hochman's announcement comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom recently asked the state's parole board to evaluate the risk of possibly granting clemency, one of the paths to freedom for the brothers. Newsom could rule on the brothers' request for clemency or commutation of their sentences at any time.

Hochman said earlier that he opposes any retrial for the brothers, a third legal avenue to freedom.

At the state level, the Menendez brothers petitioned the governor’s office to have their sentences commuted. Gov. Newsom said he directed the board of parole hearings to do a risk assessment investigation to see if the brothers pose a risk to public safety should they be released. 

“My office conducts dozens and dozens of these clemency reviews on a consistent basis, but this process simply provides more transparency, which I think is important in this case, as well as provides us more due diligence before I make any determination for clemency,” Newsom said. 

The governor’s office says that assessment could take a few months to complete.

The findings will be made available to the judge presiding in the resentencing motion and the LA County prosecutor's office, Newsom said. The analysis usually includes what led a person to commit the crime, their behavior in prison and whether they are likely to repeat the offense.

If, eventually, the brothers were recommended for parole by the state board, the matter would be placed before the governor for a final decision. The parole process involves several steps before reaching that point and offers one legal avenue toward freedom for Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted in 1996 of the murders of their parents in 1989.