Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman’s move to stymie a bid for freedom from Erik and Lyle Menendez ignores the facts of the case and is motivated by political self-interest, the brothers’ attorneys argue in a new court filing.
Hochman’s predecessor, George Gascón, sought resentencing for the brothers in the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents. Before losing to Hochman in November’s election, Gascón asked a judge to rescind the Mendendezes’ sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
He urged they be given 50 years to life. Since they were youthful offenders — 18 and 21 — when they gunned down Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home, resentencing could make them eligible for parole and lead to their freedom after three decades in jail.
Since Hochman took over as district attorney, he has opposed the brothers getting a new trial, and last month filed a motion to rescind Gascón’s resentencing request.
Hochman said when filing his motion that the brothers had repeatedly lied about the crime, even claiming the murders were carried out by the mafia. He questioned whether their self-defense claims were valid — their “purported actual fear that their mother and their father were going to kill them the night of the murders.” The brothers have maintained they were subject to years of sexual and emotional abuse by their parents.
Hochman said the brothers had not demonstrated “complete insight and acceptance of responsibility” of their crime and that the previous prosecutor team ignored significant rule violations in prison.
The brothers’ lawyers, led by Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, paint Hochman’s action as motivated by politics, not legal reasoning, as case law requires.
“The question here is whether the record shows the decision to withdraw the request for resentencing motion was based on ‘legitimate reasons,’” they write, “or instead: ‘a change of political winds.’”
They point to Hochman’s reassignment of two prosecutors, Nancy Theberge and Brock Lunsford, who worked with Gascón on the Menendez motion and recommended the brothers be freed. Hochman appointed a private attorney, Kathy Cady, as head of the D.A.’s victims services unit. Cady represented the only Menendez relative who voiced his opposition to resentencing for the brothers. Her client, Milton Anderson, was Kitty Menendez’s brother, and has since died.
The defense attorneys say Hochman is trying to rewrite history.
“The motion to withdraw contains serious factual and legal errors,” the attorneys write, “and it “ignores Erik and Lyle’s consistent taking of responsibility and expressions of remorse over decades in prison.”
Hochman, the defense team notes, has “continued to focus on falsehoods [the brothers] told in the aftermath of the crime, and even during 1993 and 1996 trials.” The defense acknowledges the pair “lied and they tried to fabricate evidence,” but in the three decades since, they have been forthcoming about the crime.
In 1989, the Menendez brothers bought a pair of shotguns with cash, walked into their Beverly Hills mansion and shot their parents while they were watching a movie in the family living room. Jose Menendez was struck five times, and Kitty Menendez crawled across the floor, wounded, before the brothers reloaded and fired a fatal blast. Prosecutors during the trials argued the murders were motivated by a multimillion-dollar inheritance, while the defense argued it was a form of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father.
Hochman’s motion to withdraw the resentencing request maintains that Erik, now 54, and Lyle, 57, “pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community,” their lawyers say, but “makes no reference to them having scored the lowest felony risk assessment scores — zero.” They further say that rules violations the D.A. has referenced are petty and were made over the course of decades in prison.
Hochman has cited Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to deny Sirhan Sirhan parole in the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, saying the Menendez brothers’ lack of insight about their crime is comparable to that of RFK’s killer.
But Geragos and the brothers’ legal team say that Sirhan has, over the years, flip-flopped about his guilt and, while in prison, insisted he is innocent. The Menendezes, however, have owned their crime since their conviction, their attorneys say, citing a quote during the brothers’ 1996 Barbara Walters interview: “What we did was awful, and I wish we could go back.”
The brothers’ lawyers repeatedly noted that some 30 members of the family supported their release and claimed that Hochman misunderstood what the two trials of Erik and Lyle Menendez were about, arguing that “Both the prosecution and the defense recognized that the question of sexual abuse was the centerpiece of the whole case.”
Resentencing is just one of three routes the brothers are seeking for freedom. They are pursuing a new trial, citing new evidence: a letter written to a cousin by one of them prior to the killings that detailed the abuse, and an allegation by another man — a former member of boy band Menudo — that he was sexually abused by Jose Menendez.
They are also pursuing clemency with Newsom, who has directed the state parole board to launch a risk assessment into whether the Menendez brothers would pose an unreasonable risk to the public if they were released. That would be a first step in their bid for clemency.
If the brothers were to receive clemency and eventually have a parole hearing, Hochman said, he would oppose their release.
