LA district attorney will not support effort to release Menendez brothers from prison

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Monday the Menendez brothers have not “exhibited the full insights and accept complete responsibility for their actions” and that he will not support the effort to release them from prison.

Last year, in the waning months of his tenure as district attorney, George Gascón, a champion of criminal justice reform, recommended to a judge that Erik and Lyle Menendez be resentenced. “I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said.

That motion could have paved the way for the brothers to be freed after more than 35 years in prison. But Hochman, who took office in December, field a motion on Monday to withdraw Gascón’s motion. The hearing for a new sentence will still go forward, but the new prosecutor will be arguing against the motion.

Erik and Lyle Menendez, who shot their parents to death in 1989, have long claimed their father Jose, a record executive, had abused them sexually. During the first trial, which ended in a hung jury, they argued the killings were in self-defense because they feared their parents were about to kill them

During the second trial, the judge didn’t allow them to claim self-defense, but they were allowed to argue that Jose’s killing was “highly emotional overkill” done in part as a response to their trauma. Prosecutors, meanwhile, argued that the abuse never happened, and that even if it had, it still didn’t justify the gruesome murders, which evidence showed had been meticulously planned.

The brothers were convicted in the second trial and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Federal and state appellate courts upheld the convictions.

But the drive to free the Menendez brothers has gained momentum in recent years, thanks in part to a documentary and television series about the killings, as well as petitioning by more than 20 family members. The brothers and their supporters have pointed to two new pieces of evidence. The first is a photocopy of a letter, purportedly written by Erik Menendez to a cousin in 1988, in which he refers to his father’s abuse. “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in,” he wrote.

The second piece of evidence involves the story of Roy Rossello, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who in 2023 revealed that Jose Menendez drugged and raped him when he was 14 years old.

“The new evidence not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that — in fact — he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988,” the brothers wrote in a writ of habeas corpus, a motion for a new trial, filed in 2023.

Hochman announced that he would not be supporting the writ, saying that sexual abuse did not spur self-defense, casting doubt on the authenticity of the letter, and arguing that Rossello’s testimony was irrelevant.

The Menendez family has also asked California Governor Gavin Newson to grant the brothers clemency. Newsom has direct the Board of Parole Hearings to assess whether or not Erik and Lyle pose and unreasonable risk to public safety.

In deciding whether the Menendez brothers deserve to be released, Hochman cited Newsom’s own reasoning in declining to commute the sentence of Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Even though Sirhan had spent more than 50 years in prison, has “engaged in extensive rehabilitation efforts” and was in diminished health, Newsom determined that the assassin still posed an “unreasonable risk of danger to the community because he had failed to exhibit insight and completely accept responsibility for his murder of Kennedy.”

So too, Hochman said, had the Menendez Brothers. The brothers had not, he said, fully dropped their self-defense explanation for the murders, and hadn’t admitted that they’d tried to get witnesses to lie on their behalf during their trials.

“We are, basically, in some ways, offering a path to the Menendez brothers,” Hochman said Monday at a press conference. “If the Menendez brothers at some point, unequivocally, sincerely and fully accept complete responsibility for all their criminal actions, acknowledge that the ‘self-defense’ defense was phony and their parents weren’t going to kill them the night of Aug. 20, when they murdered them in cold blood, in the future, the court can weigh these new insights into making a determination as to whether they now qualify for rehabilitation and resentencing.

“But for now, while the Menendez brothers persist on telling these lies,” Hochman continued, “then they do not meet the standards for resentencing. They do not meet the standards for rehabilitation.”

In his filing with the court Hochman went even further, suggesting that the brothers’ prison disciplinary record wasn’t as sterling as their supporters claim. Erik, Hochman wrote, had demonstrated “a continued pattern of dishonesty and manipulation” and cited one incident in 1999, when he argued with and then assaulted a female visitor by pushing and then pulling her by the back of her neck, and then lying to an appeals board about it.

As for Lyle, Hochman wrote, he had demonstrated “a continued pattern of circumventing the prison rules to engage in improper behavior,” sneaking in shoes and cellphones, and failing to report to work.

The brothers’ resentencing hearing had been scheduled for March 20, but Hochman suggested it may be postponed.

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