Freedom for Menendez Brothers Unclear as New D.A. Weighs Resentencing
The twisty fight for the release of Erik and Lyle Menendez from California prison, where they are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for gunning down their parents in 1989, took a turn towards unpredictable after the decision to initiate the legal process for their release moved to the hands of incoming Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman, sworn into office last week.
Hochman rides into the city’s top law enforcement position after handily ousting embattled progressive incumbent George Gascón in the November election. Gascón, whom voters kicked out of office on Nov. 5 following two tumultuous terms and multiple bruising recall attempts, had bolstered the process to free the brothers, who admitted to killing their parents but who have been model inmates for nearly three decades.
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The decision about the brothers’ release after committing the double murder in Beverly Hills over 30 years ago falls into Hochman’s lap on day one in office. The Beverly Hills native has said he’ll take a “hard middle approach” to crime in the city, and that appears to be how he will handle the Menendez case.
“Starting today, I will get access to confidential prison files that number in the 1000s of pages [and] trial transcripts from two months-long trials,” he told TMZ in an interview on the steps of the Hall of Justice in Downtown Los Angeles. “I’ll get a chance now to meet with the prosecutors, law enforcement officers, the defense counsel [and] victim family members and then we’re going to look at what the different motions are that are currently pending.”
An interview request sent to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office by The Hollywood Reporter was not immediately answered on Monday.
As they dangle on the cusp of gaining their freedom, the legal avenues available for the Menendez brothers, who by 2005 had exhausted their appeals, are threefold. Before the release of Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story this fall, the brothers’ hopes for freedom lay in a petition for a habeas corpus hearing to challenge their conviction. This maneuver is typically used after all appeals are exhausted, but factors, including new evidence revealed in the Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed — particularly an allegation that their father had raped former Menudo member Roy Rosselló while he ran RCA Records in the 1980s — are compelling. A successful hearing could result in Erik and Lyle’s release from prison, or a reduction of charges.
This was the plan the brothers and their attorneys formed while housed at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where they’ve been held together since 2005, when Gascón, at the height of his reelection campaign in October, wrote a letter to the judge overseeing their case declaring that they should be free.
Adding to the urgency was Ryan Murphy’s limited Netflix series and a subsequent documentary series from the streamer that brought their case back into the national consciousness. Around then, the brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, veered their case toward a clemency release after first asking to reduce the charges to manslaughter, something that Gascón rejected, saying it felt inappropriate given the circumstances of the killings. Clemency from the governor, of course, would be preferable for the brothers to the lengthier habeas corpus hearing avenue they were attempting.
Then, on Nov. 18, California Gov. Gavin Newsom decided to allow Hochman to weigh in on the clemency requests for the Menendez, further delaying the potential release. A judge rescheduled the hearing date from Dec. 11 to Jan. 30 and 31 during a status conference. Now, it all rests with Hochman, and many are wondering where he will land and if he will continue down the path Gascón was headed in backing the reconsideration of the brothers’ sentences.
“Politics are at play more than anything,” John J. Perlstein, a litigator in Los Angeles for 35 years, said while discussing the case with THR, adding that if politics weren’t at play, there wouldn’t “be this big of an issue. I think that they would be resentenced with an eligibility for parole, which they’d be approaching. They would either be placed on parole with tight conditions. If that didn’t work, there’d be some clemency granted by the governor — which I’m not sure, given his political ambitions, whether he wants to get involved in that.”
Perlstein ran a sizable firm as the brothers’ cases played out on television in the 1990s, and they’d watch the proceedings from the offices, he said. Now he’s watching with the rest of the nation as their potential freedom becomes caught up in the city’s politics when the public perceives crime to be at an all-time high. This contributed to Gascón’s ouster on Nov. 5, as the incumbent was perceived to be soft on crime and too progressive in sentencing offenders. A similar look might not be the best move for Hochman as his first order of business.
“Now you have a new D.A. and he doesn’t want to look soft on crime either,” Perlstein said. You have these guys who murdered their parents — right, wrong or indifferent. So if, if you have aspirations in politics these days, given the nature of where everybody’s at, the easy call would be, they murdered somebody, and they [were sentenced] under our judicial system, the sentence stands. Let’s move on.”
Yet in addition to new evidence, factors like sentencing guidelines and some of the mitigating elements of the case are at play as Hochman makes his decision. Perlstein adds that seeing so many family members, who were closer with Jose and Kitty Menendez and now advocating for mercy for the brothers is relevant. Hochman said he will consider all of this, but was crystal clear while speaking on the case after being sworn in last week.
“The Menendez case, though it’s received high levels of media attention, will not get preferential treatment because it is on the media stage,” he said. “This is the same type of analysis, a thorough review of the facts of the law that I will give to every case, whether it gets media attention or not.”
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