Menendez brothers to get resentencing after D.A. fails in bid to stop it
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An L.A. County judge denied Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman’s bid Friday to revoke a petition to resentence the Menendez brothers that was filed by his predecessor, setting the stage for a hearing that could offer the brothers a path to freedom next week.
Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic denied Hochman’s request after a tense, daylong hearing that saw prosecutors display bloody crime scene photos of the bodies of Jose and Kitty Menendez in a courtroom lined with their relatives, many of whom want their killers, sons Erik and Lyle Menendez, set free.
In October, former Dist. Atty. George Gascón sought to have the brothers resentenced to 50 years to life in prison — a move could have made them eligible for parole as youthful offenders because they carried out the killings before they were 26 years old. After Hochman thrashed Gascón in the November election, he promised to revisit the Menendez case.
Last month, Hochman formally announced his opposition to their release and said he’d ask a judge to rescind Gascón’s petition and only consider his filing as the official position of the district attorney’s office. He focused on the idea that the brothers had not shown proper “insight” into their crimes, but Jesic dismissed that as irrelevant to the resentencing proceedings and said “there was nothing really new” in the analysis of the case offered by Hochman.
“Justice won over politics,” defense attorney Mark Geragos said outside the courtroom.
Jesic’s ruling on Friday clears the path for a resentencing hearing, which is expected to last at least two days and begin in Van Nuys on Thursday.
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman moved Monday to rescind a request by his predecessor to resentence brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez for the murders of their parents, raising questions about the validity of their self-defense claims.
Legal experts said there was little precedent for Hochman to try to claw back Gascón’s motion, though he has every right to add his own position to the record.
“These murders were calculated, premeditated, cold-blooded killings,” Hochman said in a statement issued late Friday. “Our position remains clear: Until the Menendez brothers finally come clean with all their lies of self-defense and suborning and attempting to suborn perjury, they are not rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety.”
In court Friday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian told a judge that Gascón simply didn’t “get” the case and had carried out only a half-baked analysis of the brothers’ past trials and their willingness to accept responsibility for the murders.
Hochman and Balian have claimed that the brothers are still lying about the circumstances of their crimes. Balian said Friday that neither Gascón nor the prosecutors who filed his three-page resentencing petition even retrieved the case files from archives before rendering a decision.
Balian also repeated Hochman’s contention that Gascón took up the case for political gain, even though he had been trailing Hochman by roughly 30 points in the polls and even some of his closest advisors were admitting defeat.
Sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their wealthy parents, Erik and Lyle Menendez saw support for their release surge after the release of a popular Netflix documentary last year and the discovery of potential new evidence that their father, Jose, sexually abused not only the brothers but also a former member of the boy band Menudo.
In petitions seeking a new trial, the brothers’ attorneys have cited the fresh sex-abuse allegations against Jose Menendez as evidence critical to their self-defense claims.
Balian on Friday argued that the brothers repeatedly coached witnesses at their earlier trials to lie about the threat they faced from their parents in order to bolster their self-defense argument. As Balian spoke, Hochman looked on from the gallery.
Last month, Hochman filed an 88-page motion opposing the brothers’ resentencing, arguing that the brothers are still lying about the motive for their crimes — and thus haven’t taken full responsibility for the killings — and pose an unreasonable risk to the public.
“The Menendez brothers have continued to lie for over 30 years about their self-defense — that is, their purported actual fear that their mother and their father were going to kill them the night of the murders,” the motion read. “Also, over those 30 years, they have failed to accept responsibility for the vast number of lies they told in connection with that defense.”
The wife of celebrity hairstylist Fabio Sementelli has been convicted of arranging his 2017 murder. Prosecutors said Monica Sementelli directed her lover to kill him.
On the night of the slayings, the brothers walked into their Beverly Hills mansion and shot their parents with shotguns they’d bought with cash. Jose and Kitty Menendez were watching a movie in the living room when Jose Menendez was shot five times, including in the kneecaps and the back of the head. Kitty Menendez crawled on the floor wounded before one of the brothers reloaded and fired a fatal blast, authorities have said.
The brothers were charged with murder after Erik, then 18, confessed to the killings to his therapist. During the brothers’ two trials, prosecutors argued the killings were motivated by the brothers’ desire to gain access to their multimillion-dollar inheritance. But defense attorneys countered that years of violent sexual abuse by their father preceded the shootings, justifying the slayings as a form of self-defense.
Balian displayed photos of the bloody crime scene in court Friday, triggering an eruption from Geragos, who accused the prosecutor of “putting on a dog-and-pony show” meant to relitigate the original murder case, when the purpose of the hearing was solely to determine whether Gascón’s motion should be revoked.
“There is no concern for the victims,” Geragos said of the nearly two dozen of the brothers’ relatives who have called for them to be set free. “They are being traumatized by the D.A. for political purposes.”
“These two caused the carnage,” Balian said before gesturing to the brothers, who were watching on a live feed.
Geragos also questioned Hochman’s repeated invocation of the “insight” the brothers needed to show in their crime to justify release, noting that’s a standard relevant to a parole hearing, not a resentencing motion.
Judge Jesic agreed, saying case law did not require a district attorney to address “insight” in such a petition and that could not serve as the basis for withdrawal.
After Hochman filed his opposition last month, supporters of the Menendez brothers accused the district attorney of playing politics with the siblings’ lives. Among his first moves in office was to hire Kathy Cady, a former prosecutor who served as a victims rights attorney to the lone Menendez relative opposed to the brothers’ release. He also demoted and transferred the two attorneys who argued for the brothers’ release under Gascón, a move that triggered a civil lawsuit against Hochman and a close political ally in the office.
“This is a show proceeding by a D.A. who frankly is a throwback to the ’90s or, in this case, the ’80s,” Geragos said.
In their motion advocating for the brothers’ release, Geragos and attorney Clifford Gardner reiterated that the brothers have had few rules violations during their 30-plus years in prison, and both were given the lowest felony risk assessment scores available from prison officials.
While the brothers’ resentencing petition will draw droves of media to a Van Nuys courtroom over the next several weeks, it is not their only potential path to freedom. In addition to their motion for a new trial based on fresh allegations of sexual abuse by their father, Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering the brothers’ application for clemency and directed the state parole board to launch a risk assessment of the brothers.
If they were granted clemency and appeared before the parole board, however, Hochman has vowed to fight their release again.
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