Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman is calling on the court to withdraw a new sentencing hearing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, concluding that that the siblings “do not meet the standards for rehabilitation.” “They have not exhibited the full insights and accepted complete responsibility for their actions,’ Hochman said at a press conference this […]Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman is calling on the court to withdraw a new sentencing hearing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, concluding that that the siblings “do not meet the standards for rehabilitation.” “They have not exhibited the full insights and accepted complete responsibility for their actions,’ Hochman said at a press conference this
Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman is calling on the court to withdraw a new sentencing hearing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, concluding that that the siblings “do not meet the standards for rehabilitation.”
“They have not exhibited the full insights and accepted complete responsibility for their actions,’ Hochman said at a press conference this morning.
The Menendez brothers were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents.
The hearing is scheduled for March 20 and 21. Hochman’s predecessor, George Gascon, supported resentencing, including that they be made eligible for parole.
During the press conference, Hochman ran through the circumstances of the Aug. 20, 1989 grisly murders of their parents, Jose and and Kitty Menendez, and highlighting the shifting nature of the siblings’ alibi and later defense. Hochman said that Lyle and Erik Menendez had failed to acknowledge more than two dozen “lies” about the murders, including that their claims that they acted on self defense was a ruse.
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“For now, while the Menendez brothers persist in telling these lies, and lies over 30 years about their self-defense defense, and persist in insisting that they did not subordinate perjury or attempt to suborn perjury, then they do not meet the standards for resentencing,” he said.
Hochman also pointed to the role of Governor Gavin Newsom, noting that he could grant clemency. The district attorney used the example of Sirhan Sirhan, noting that the governor blocked the release of the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy after concluding that he had declined to accept responsibility. Newsom ordered a risk assessment of the brothers, as he weighs a clemency petition. If the brothers are resentenced, the parole board would still have to review the decision, and the governor also would have to approve it.
Hochman last month announced that he would oppose efforts by the brothers to get a new trial, calling them out for what he said were a “continuum of lies and deceit and fabricating stories.” He has said that there was a lack of “credible evidence” for a new trial, dismissing a 1988 letter between Erik Menendez and his cousin Andy Cano on the repeated sexual abuse that was allegedly being perpetrated by the siblings’ father on Lyle Menendez and others.
The brothers’ case has come back into the headlines in no small part because of new evidence of sexual abuse by the boys’ music executive father revealed in Peacock’s 2023 docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, and more recently, Ryan Murphy’s nine-part crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which launched on Netflix on September 19. Those shows were followed by a Menendez docu on the Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters-run streamer, and advocacy for the brothers from the likes of Kim Kardashian and a number of the killers’ family members.
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