Backing down, Menendez lawyer withdraws motion to toss DA from case

LOS ANGELES (CN) — In a surprising about-face on Friday, Erik and Lyle Menendez’s lawyer withdrew a motion to have Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman removed from the case.

Their lawyer, Mark Geragos, said he did not want to further delay a resentencing hearing, now scheduled for next week.

The brothers, who killed their parents in 1989, have been incarcerated ever since, serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. A successful resentencing hearing could see them released, as more than 20 members of their extended family have called for.

The original motion to have the brothers resentenced was filed last year by the previous LA County district attorney, George Gascón, in the waning days of his first term.

Hochman, who has promised to reverse much of his reform-minded predecessor’s changes, filed a motion to withdraw that bid for a new sentence. Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic rejected it.

Geragos, a prominent LA attorney who’s been representing the brothers, has grown increasingly irritated with Hochman’s opposition to the brothers’ release. He filed a motion to have Hochman recused from the case, arguing that the former Republican DA was biased against the brothers.

To support this unusual claim, Geragos cited Hochman’s close personal involvement with the case, including his hiring of an attorney who once represented the one member of the extended Menendez family who did not support freeing Erik and Lyle. That motion was set for a hearing on Friday.

In court, Geragos appeared ambivalent on how to proceed. Even as he said he would drop the motion to remove Hochman, he renewed his objections to the DA’s behavior, arguing Hochman has an “obsession” with the Menenedez brothers.

Geragos pointed out that Hochman himself was at the hearing — itself an unusual step for an elected district attorney to take. Geragos also added a new claim: that Hochman had spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on LAG Strategy, a crisis PR group run by a former LA Times reporter, to help sell to a skeptical public the argument that the brothers should remain in prison.

“Are you pulling your motion?” asked Judge Jesic, who in previous hearings has given both sides’ attorneys broad latitude to make whatever arguments they wanted.

“Yes, I think I am,” said Geragos, still hesitant.

“If you’re withdrawing the motion, I don’t want to go down some rabbit hole,” Jesic said.

Deputy District Attorney Ethan Milius said it was “wholly inappropriate” to use the hearing as “a vehicle to attack the district attorney.” Hochman himself called the allegations “100% absurdly false.” He added he had employed LAG during the 2024 campaign but never since.

In a written statement, LAG co-founder Stuart Pfeifer said his firm managed communications for Hochman’s campaign, and that their role ended after Hochman was sworn in. “The Geragos team’s statement in court today shows they simply did not do their homework,” Pfeifer said.

Hochman had also filed a renewed motion to withdraw Gascón’s motion for a resentencing hearing, citing new evidence — that is, a comprehensive risk assessment put together by the state parole board for the purpose of evaluating the brothers’ bid for clemency.

Hochman said the report, a psychological assessment of whether the prisoners pose a risk to society, determined that the brothers were a “moderate level of risk.”

Hochman said the report showed that Lyle Menendez was caught in 2024 with a cellphone, which is illegal contraband in prison. That was well after the brothers had filed a writ of habeas corpus requesting a new trial, which is still pending. Hochman said the report, which has not been made public, states that Lyle “continues to display narcissistic and antisocial personality traits” and that he “downplays” his behavior as “victimless.”

“Are you suggesting they went from low-risk to a medium level of risk all because of a cellphone?” a skeptical judge asked.

“No,” Hochman said. Instead, he argued the report showed the brothers had elements of “entitlement and minimization” and were likely to look for easy and convenient ways to get what they want. Hochman said that per the report, the brothers could still be freed at some point in the future once they have corrected those behaviors.

“It doesn’t say never,” Hochman said. “It says not now.”

But having read the report, Judge Jesic said it offered nothing new. He said it was “subjective analysis by a psychologist” — not a final report, nor one intended for use in a court proceeding.

The ruling sets the court up to have a full resentencing hearing, which expected to run through next Tuesday and Wednesday. Geragos said he would call as witnesses seven members of the Menendez family, as well as two experts.

Hochman has argued that the brothers don’t deserve to be released in part because they still maintain their argument that they killed their parents in self-defense because they thought their parents were planning on killing them. That could be a key issue during next week’s hearing. After the hearing, Geragos said he had not yet decided whether or not Erik and Lyle would testify.

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