Los Angeles County's next District Attorney said Wednesday he's been preparing for the role, meeting with the office's prosecutors and studying the bureaucracy, so he can begin work immediately on revising the office's policies and priorities.
"My job is to actually listen to those solutions and implement them along with my ideas, as quickly as possible," Nathan Hochman said Wednesday morning, hours after it was clear he'd unseated incumbent DA George Gascón in a decisive victory.
"Gascón identified a number of the problems in the system, and for that, he deserves credit," Hochman said.
"Those problems still exist in some respect, and they still need to be addressed, but I strongly disagree with Mr. Gascón on his solutions to those those problems."
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
Hochman is set to be sworn in on Dec. 2 and may soon have to make decisions about how to proceed with the request, filed by Gascón, to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez to reduced prison terms that would make the brothers eligible for an immediate release on parole.
The brothers are currently serving life-without-parole sentences for the shotgun murders of their parents in Beverly Hills in 1989, but Hochman said he can't consider the case without reviewing the files and speaking to the parties, which he can't do until he takes office.
“I know where to start, I know how to do it expeditiously, and if I need more time, I'll ask the court for more time, but I won't engage in delay for delay's sake," he said.
"The Menendez brothers need to know what the answer is, the victims' family members need to know what the answer is, the public needs to know what that answers is."
Hochman campaigned as a former federal prosecutor with plans to reverse many of Gascón's blanket reform policies that had the effect of reducing penalties for a variety of crimes, but he said Wednesday he planned to address the issues cautiously while also drawing on his decades of experience as a criminal defense lawyer.
"I've been a defense attorney almost twice as long as I've been a prosecutor for 24 years, and so I will bring that perspective, which is a presumption of innocence and the importance of it, making sure every case is proven beyond reasonable doubt to a jury of 12 people who decide it unanimously," he said.
Gascón's campaign issued a statement Wednesday that the DA had spoken with Hochman to congratulate him.
"I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished over the past four years and grateful to the communities who have been and will always be the heart of criminal justice reform," the statement said.
