A California judge has cut short the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s last-minute effort to delay the Menendez brothers’ resentencing hearing.
After Deadline revealed a filing late Wednesday by Nathan Hochman’s team based on a supposedly completed parole board risk assessment report ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Judge Micheal Jesic quickly ruled Thursday morning that the previously pushed back hearing would go forward. With Erik Menendez and Lyle Menendez attending virtually from a state prison near San Diego, the hearing is set to run today and Friday.
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Anticipated to testify today, Lyle Menendez posted about the hearing on his Facebook page as events unfolded:
Thursday will see the Mark Geragos- and Bryan Freedman-led defense deliver opening arguments and call witnesses. The defense will emphasize the brothers’ claims of self-defense from the sexual abuse by their father José Menendez as the main reason behind the bloody 1989 shotgun murder of their parents. Dismissing that defense as just the latest tale spun by the brothers, the DA’s office has not yet revealed who they will call as witnesses, or whether the prosecution led by Deputy DA Habib Balian will call any witnesses at all.
During his remarks before the court today, Freedman picked up on his clients’ request of April 14 to have the DA removed from the case. Specifically, the lawyer spotlighted that Hochman grew up close to the Menendezes’ Beverly Hills home and went to the same high school as the brothers. Freedman told the court the DA should be disqualified for not disclosing that in relation to this case, as well as for alleged violations of California’s Victims Rights statute aka Marsy’s Law.
With a throng of journalists and more trying to get into the hearing as well as members of the public in long lines to snag a seat, outside the Van Nuys courthouse was more like outside a sold-out Monster truck show than a hearing. As lawyers and relatives of the siblings showed up, some with walkers, they were surrounded by cameras and smartphones.
The brothers were convicted in a second trial and sentenced in 1996 in their early 20s to spend the rest of the lives behind bars for the admittedly premeditated murders of their father and mother Kitty Menendez. Never far from the headlines, the case of the now middle-aged siblings took center stage again last year thanks to Ryan Murphy and Netflix’s hit series Monsters: The Lyle & Erik Menendez Story and several documentaries reexamining the circumstances behind the murders.
LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Thursday
While rejecting his successor George Gascón’s move to support a resentencing of the brothers, plus dashing their hopes for a new trial in recent weeks, Hochman today made a point outside the courthouse of trying to tone down his previous bellicose stance.
Responding in part to a stint before the microphones earlier Thursday by the verbose Geragos, Hochman said: “When people say, is that, does the prosecution oppose resentencing? The answer is not no. The answer is not yet. And the reason I say not yet is that we have identified a pathway for the Menendez brothers to come forward acknowledge all the lies they have told for the past 30 years. And then at that point, if they do it, unequivocally and sincerely, and they convince the court, because ultimately the court has to make the decision here, then they can then say to the court, we have come clean, we have been rehabilitated. We no longer constitute a risk of danger to society. But until that happens, the answer is not yet for resentencing.”
Even before the DA spoke Thursday, Geragos wasn’t buying it, and accused the ambitious Hochman of playing politics with the Menendez brothers’ fate and their family’s emotions
“Why is it that this DA is abusing the victims?” the media-savvy attorney rhetorically asked. “Why is it that he thinks it’s appropriate to go hold a press conference when one of his actions 30 hours later, arguably put one of the matriarch of this family into the hospital after being found unresponsive,” Geragos added of the horrific 1989 crime scene photos showing José Menendez (which have been made public before) that were unexpectedly flashed on screen during an April 11 pre-hearing session.
“I would ask you to ask the DA why, at the last minute, he does a Hail Mary filing of a motion to continue and does not notify any of the victims or the victim’s lawyer, why?” Geragos added. “What is going on? Whose interest is he vindicating … Ask him if he’s vindicating his victims’ rights, the public’s rights, or if he’s just trying to placate some disgruntled DA is in his own office for political purposes?”
Amid this week’s resentencing hearings, Newsom will ultimately make the final decision on all this after early last month ordering a risk assessment of the brothers to inform a clemency request on his desk since late 2024. The brothers are set to appear individually before the parole board June 13. After getting recommendations from the board, who would have to oversee any potential resentencing and pass that on to Newsom, the governor will announce his decision.
Under the twists of California law, if Jesic does determines that the Menendez brothers’ life without parole sentence should be reassessed, it is actually the state parole board that conducts a probe into the matter — which, with the way things have turned out, puts this all in the governor’s hands either way.
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