Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez.
| Photo Credit: AP
The Los Angeles district attorney said Friday he hasn’t yet made a decision on whether Lyle and Erik Menendez should be resentenced in their 1996 conviction for the murder of their wealthy parents at their Beverly Hills home.
The proposed resentencing for the brothers will be taken up at a March hearing and would make them immediately eligible for parole. District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who took office in December, said at a news conference he’ll share an update on his position in the coming weeks. His predecessor, George Gascón, recommended last year the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life. Gascón lost his bid for reelection in November to Hochman, who called the recommendation a “desperate political move.”
The brothers were found guilty in the 1989 murders of their entertainment executive father, Jose, and their mother, Kitty Menendez, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They began their bid for freedom in recent years after new evidence of their father’s sexual abuse emerged in their case, and they have the support of most of their extended family.
During a lengthy news conference Friday, Hochman spoke about a habeas corpus petition the brothers’ attorneys filed in 2023 asking for a reexamination of the case, arguing they had new evidence to present related to allegations that the brothers’ father sexually abused Erik Menendez. Hochman said he was filing an informal response to the habeas petition urging the court to reject it. He cast doubt on evidence alleging that Erik Menendez had been sexually abused and said it was not pertinent to the case.
“Sexual abuse in this situation may have been a motivation for Erik and Lyle to do what they did, but it does not constitute self-defense,” Hochman said.
A resentencing hearing originally scheduled for early December was delayed to the end of January after Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic said he needed time to review extensive evidence and give Hochman time to weigh in on the case. In January, Hochman pushed the hearing out another two months — to March 20 and 21 — because of the Los Angeles wildfires.
Hochman has met with the brothers’ relatives as he reviews their case, which includes thousands of pages of prison records to determine the “rehabilitation aspect” of their resentencing.
Lyle Menendez, who was then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, admitted they killed their parents with a shotgun, but they said they feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent disclosure of their father’s long-term molestation of Erik.
Prosecutors said at the time there was no evidence of molestation, and many details in their story of sexual abuse were not permitted in the trial that led to their conviction in 1996. Prosecutors accused the brothers of killing their parents for money.
Roy Rossello, former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, recently came forward saying he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez when he was a teen in the 1980s. Menudo was signed under RCA Records, which Jose Menendez was the head of at the time.
The case has gained new traction after Netflix began streaming the true-crime drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. ”
Published – February 22, 2025 04:57 am IST
