LA district attorney won't support new trial for Menendez brothers

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced on Friday that he will not support the Menendez brothers motion for a new trial based on recently unearthed evidence.

Erik and Lyle Menendez, who shot their parents to death in 1989, have been locked up for more than 35 years, serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole. During their trial and ever since, the brothers have claimed that they were repeatedly and brutally subjected to sexual abuse by their father, Jose, and that the killings were done to prevent further abuse. Prosecutors argued that the abuse never happened, and that even if it had, it still didn’t justify the gruesome murders, which they said had evidence of being carefully planned out.

Though their first trial ended in a hung jury, the brothers were convicted during their second. The convictions were upheld by federal and state appellate courts.

In the last ten years, two new pieces of evidence emerged that the brothers say make them eligible for a new trial.

The first was a photocopy of a letter, purportedly written by Erik Menendez to a cousin in 1988, less than a year before the killings, referring to the sexual abuse. In it, Erik Menendez wrote, “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”

Then in 2023, a former member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rossello, revealed that Jose Menendez, a record executive, drugged and raped him when he was 14 years old.

The brothers filed their writ of habeas corpus — a motion for a new trial — in 2023, writing: “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.”

On Friday, Hochman filed an informal response to the motion, recommending that it be denied.

“Sexual abuse is abhorrent,” he said at a press conference. “But sexual abuse in this situation, while it may have been a motivation for Erik and Lyle to do what they did, does not constitute self defense.”

He said that the two new pieces of evidence were not enough for a new trial to be granted. The letter, he said, was first unearthed by Barbara Walters in 2015. That meant it was untimely, since the brother could well have filed their motion ten years ago. Besides, Hochman said, for the letter to have gone unmentioned by both Erik and the cousin during the trial was “inconceivable,” and “defies common sense.”

“It is not credible evidence,” Hochman said. “If this letter truly existed, defense counsel would have used it at trial.”

As to Rosello’s story, Hochman said it was inadmissible, since the brothers didn’t know about it in 1989.

“For the Roy Russell declaration, we’re saying that it’s inadmissible because a declaration about incidents that occurred between Roy Rosello and Jose Menendez in the 1980s that the Menendez brothers didn’t know about until the 2020s, we don’t believe could influence their state of mind when they actually killed their parents.”

When asked by a reporter whether or not he believed the brothers had been sexually assaulted by their father, Hochman repeatedly dodged the question, saying only, “They absolutely testified to it in great detail. I also understand that when it came to any corroborating information about that sexual abuse, it was extremely lacking.”

More than 20 Menendez family members, including the sisters of both Jose and Kitty Menendez, the murdered mother, have been advocating for the brothers’ release. On Friday, in a written statement, the family said they were “profoundly disappointed” by what they called Hochman’s “abhorrent dismissal of abuse.”

“He effectively tore up new evidence and discredited the trauma they experienced,” the family wrote. “Abuse does not exist in a vacuum. It leaves lasting scars, rewires the brain, and traps victims in cycles of fear and trauma. To say it played no role in Erik and Lyle’s action is to ignore decades of psychological research and basic human understanding.”

“Our hope now rests with Judge Jesic, that he will examine the evidence in their case without prejudice, carefully adhering to California law with modern understanding of trauma,” they added, referencing Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic, who postponed a hearing in the case until March 20.

Hochman’s move is only the latest in a series of policy shifts away from his predecessor, George Gascón, whom Hochman recently replaced.

The brothers have been pursuing three avenues to obtaining freedom. Besides the writ of habeas corpus, they are also hoping for a new sentence, based on both new evidence and the fact that they have been rehabilitated. That effort has been supported by more than 20 Menendez family members, including the sisters of both parents.

Last year, in the waning months of tenure as district attorney, Gascón, usually heralded as a champion of criminal justice reform, recommended to a judge that the brothers be resentenced, saying, “I believe they have paid their debt to society.” That triggered a legal process that could lead to their freedom.

On Friday, Hochman said that he has not decided whether or not to support that effort, but that his decision is likely to come in the next few weeks.

The brothers have also asked Governor Gavin Newsom for clemency. In November, after Hochman had been elected but before he’d been sworn in, Newsom said that he would wait for the city district attorney to weigh in on the Menendez matter before deciding on the issue of clemency.

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