With less than a month remaining before a California state judge may determine the fate of the Menendez brothers, the Los Angeles County District Attorney announced today that he has “not” yet made a decision regarding recommendations to the court about the siblings’ release.
via: Deadline
Speaking not long after nearly three-hour meeting Friday with 20 members of the Menendez family who want to see lenience to their relatives, Nathan Hochman made sure not to play his hand on where he and his office is leaning. In a hastily called press conference today, the D.A. termed the gathering with the family “off the record. Hochman would only say it was a “productive meeting.”
“We are going to spend the time necessary to get this decision right,” Hochman went on to say Friday in language he used even before his landslide win over incumbent George Gascón and since, such as when he spoke to Deadline last month. “No decision has been made to speak with the Menendezs themselves,” Hochman added, even after saying he would talk to anyone impacted by the brothers’ horrific killing of their parents over 35 years ago.
Milton Andersen, the brother of the Menendez’s mother and the brothers’ uncle, has been very vocal in his opposition to any resentencing effort ever since a poll struggling Gascón followed up on a habeas petition filed by Mark Geragos and fellow attorney Clifford Gardner last year and finally put forth a filing on resentencing that could get the Menendezs out years before their life without parole sentence is over. Anderson’s longtime lawyer Kathleen Cady, a big Hochman supporter and former Assistant DA, has been named the director of the Bureau of Victims Services at the D.A.’s office. Lawyers for the members of the Menendez family who want the siblings out of jail have pointed at this as a messy conflict of interest.
Previously scheduled for December 11 and pushed back to give newly elected DA Hochman time to get up to speed, a resentencing hearing for the 1996 convicted siblings has now been set for January 30. If necessary, a second resentencing day on January 31 is on the calendar.
While additional time may be needed, Hochman declared today that the January 30 date is when he intends to make his recommendation to the court known. Discussions among the family and their lawyers to petition Californian Attorney General Rob Bonta step in over that perceived conflict of interest in the D.A.’s office were given short shrift by Hochman in his remarks today.
Behind bars in the same state prison near San Diego, the now middled aged Lyle Menendez and Erik Menendez brutally murdered their record executive father Jose and their mother Kitty in 1989 in a premeditated event at the family’s Beverly Hills home.
As a part of their defense following an ostentatious spending spree and the young men’s arrests a year later, the brothers claimed their father repeatedly sexually abused them. To that, they insisted the shotgun shootings were self-defense. A media circus from start to finish, the Menendez brothers first trial ended in mistrials. With a lot less cameras in the courtroom and reporters outside a couple of years later, a second trial in 1996 found the brothers convicted of first-degree murder. Those sentences were reaffirmed by two appeals courts over the years.
Outside the courts, the power of a 2023 Peacock docuseries on the Menendez case, plus Ryan Murphy and Netflix’s hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, has been undeniable in getting this case back on first Gascon and now Hochman’s desks. While this could end up at the parole board or on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, evidence of a 1988 letter to a cousin from Erik Menendez writing of the abuse from his father months before the parents’ slaying has come to prominence in the last year and a half. That cousin testified in the second trial in 1996 and sexual abuse was mentioned, despite claims by Geragos and others that it was sidelined. More recently, further allegations have also emerged that Jose Menendez sexually assaulted at least one member of the boy band Menudo in the 1980s.
Before the meeting between the DA and Menendez relatives, the family put out a statement of their own: “As we prepare to meet with DA Hochman, our family is hopeful for an open and fair discussion. Despite the abuse they endured as children and the unfairness of their current sentence, Erik and Lyle Menendez have spent the last three decades taking responsibility for their actions and contributing positively to their community through leadership and rehabilitation. During our meeting with DA Hochman, we look forward to sharing our perspective on Erik and Lyle’s immense personal growth over the last 35 years, and the ways in which we plan to support them in their next chapters. We hope that this meeting will put us a step closer to spending next Christmas reunited as a family.”
The Menendez family and lawyers Geragos and Bryan Freedman plan to join the D.A.’s press conference Friday was was suddenly cancelled just before the 4:30 media scrum began. Hochman today said he has no idea why the plug was pulled on the family’s presence at the press conference. Representatives for the Menendez family did not provide any details on the change of plans.
The family did eventually come before the cameras after Hochman’s press conference was over. Anamaria Baralt, a cousin of the Menendez brothers on their father’s side, state that the relatives were “grateful” to the D.A. for the meeting Friday.
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