Menendez Brothers’ Resentencing Bid Opposed by New Los Angeles DA
The Los Angeles County District Attorney issued a statement opposing the resentencing of convicted murderers Lyle and Erik Menendez.
DA Nathan Hochman recommended that a motion for resentencing filed by his predecessor be withdrawn, citing the Menendez brothers’ continued refusal to take “complete responsibility” for murdering their parents and their continued insistence that they were acting in self-defense.
“As a full examination of the record reveals, the Menendez brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense as well as suborned perjury and attempted to suborn perjury by their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently raping Lyle’s girlfriend, their mother poisoning the family, and their attempt to get a handgun the day before the murders,” Hochman said.
The Menendez brothers are currently serving sentences of life without parole for killing their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in 1989. Last year, former DA George Gascón recommended that the court rescind this sentence and give the brothers 50 years to life. That would’ve effectively made the Menendez brothers eligible for parole as youthful offenders since they were both under 26 when the murder was committed (Erik was 18 at the time, while Lyle was 21).
While the Menendez brothers’ case has long been a national true crime phenomenon, its found renewed interest thanks to a recent slate of documentaries and the Ryan Murphy series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The latter helped spur new efforts to free the Menendez brothers, with Gascón filing his original motion last October, citing the brothers’ exemplary behavior behind bars, as well as new evidence supporting their claims of sexual abuse at the hands of their fathers.
But the fate of the brothers’ seemed uncertain after Gascón lost his election last year to Hochman, who’s taken a more “touch-on-crime” approach and has seemed dubious of resentencing efforts. In his statement today, Hochman acknowledged the brothers’ behavior in prison and the sexual abuse allegations against Jose, but ultimately argued that their “lack of full insight and lack of complete responsibility for their murders” did not overcome “the other factors justifying a resentencing.”
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Hochman did, however, leave open the possibility for supporting a future motion to resentence the Menendez brothers, saying this motion to withdraw was “based on the current state of the record and the Menendez brothers’ current and continual failure to show full insight and accept full responsibility for their murders.”
He continued: “If they were to finally come forward and unequivocally and sincerely admit and completely accept responsibility for their lies of self-defense and the attempted suborning of perjury they engaged in, then the Court should weigh such new insight into the analysis of rehabilitation and resentencing — as will the People.”
A lawyer for the Menendez brothers did not immediately return a request for comment.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, tensions between Hochman and the Menendez family members who want to see Erik and Lyle freed have spiked in recent months. Last month, they expressed concern after learning Hochman had demoted and transferred two attorneys who’d supported the resentencing bid (those lawyers have filed their own precursor complaint, alleging Hochman punished them over their position on the brothers).
Furthermore, the Menendez brothers’ cousin, Tamra Goodell, wrote in a recent complaint that when 20 members of the family met with Hochman in January, he exhibited a “hostile, dismissive and patronizing tone” that left the family “more distressed and feeling humiliated.” Goodell also shared the family’s concerns about the involvement in the case of Kathy Cady, who heads up the Bureau of Victims’ Services in the DA’s office and previously represented Kitty’s late brother, who opposed the brothers’ release before his death this month.