New L.A. D.A. Nathan Hochman Says Menendez Brothers Lawyer’s “Narrative Is Absolutely Wrong”; Vows To Enforce Sanctuary Laws Against Trump Deportation Threats – The Deadline Q&A
EXCLUSIVE: Up on the top floor of downtown’s Hall of Justice, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has little of the grandeur that the rest of the nearly 100-year-old ornate building itself would suggest, as the newly sworn-in Nathan Hochman himself points out.
“I wondered why all the windows were facing upwards, why they had what looked like bars on them,” the former U.S. Assistant Attorney General says. “I discovered this used to be the County jail before the building reopened in 2015,” Hochman adds with a laugh, waving his arms around his own largely bare office not far from where now dead Charles Manson and still living Sirhan Sirhan were once incarcerated.
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Just a few days into his term, after a landslide victory over one-termer George Gascón with support from Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Oscar nominated documentarian Rory Kennedy, ex-Republican Hochman makes no secret of the fact he’s trying to settle in quickly, figuratively and literally. Yet, in a sprawling county larger and with a greater population than most states, no matter how fast he goes, time is not something Hochman has in abundance as a thirst for change, a need for safety, and anger at incumbents was what turned so many Angelenos against Gascón.
Among one of the matters ticking away in Hochman’s inbox is the revived case of the Menendez brothers.
Convicted of first-degree murder in a second trial in 1996, and sentenced to life without parole, the now middle-aged brothers’ case was brought back into the courts by Gascón earlier this year as new-ish evidence of sexual abuse by their father became known. In one of the most media driven towns on the planet, the siblings’ 1989 murder of their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home was also back in the spotlight over the past year by well-watched shows on Peacock and Netflix.
In the dying days of his regime, with a hopeful eye on the polls, Gascón recommended resentencing and even backed a plea for clemency for the brothers before Gov. Gavin Newsom.
With now D.A. Hochman diving into the particulars of the case, that’s now all on hold until a January 30 hearing for 54-year-old Erik and 56-year-old Lyle Menendez. A hearing that likely won’t see the duo free immediately, but could certainly see the two out of prison in the next year.
At the same time as the Menendez case captures headlines and social media posts, Hochman faces other high-profile cases, a depleted staff, getting his own team in place, and Donald Trump’s return to the White House with promises of mass deportations. Sitting in the casual conference area of his personal office, the new D.A. discussed all this with me, as well as challenges he faces inside and outside the building and the county.
DEADLINE: How has the first week been in terms of learning the job and seeing what the full responsibilities of the job are?
NATHAN HOCHMAN: You know, I view the first week like I’ve used the first day, or even the anticipation the first day as an opportunity of a lifetime, I’ll get a chance, and I’ve been now exploring it at its fullest extent, of working with some of the most diverse and talented lawyers in the legal profession, not just as prosecutors.
Part of that is I will be visiting the visiting the staff, visiting the prosecutors in the 15 different offices we have. I’ll be talking with law enforcement, eventually talking with probation officers, talking to judges, even talking with public defenders and alternate public defenders. Look, the system is broken. The system I came into just wasn’t working. This office wasn’t working.
DEADLINE: How so?
HOCHMAN: It lost 20% of its workforce in recent years. People who just stopped believing in that the DA was on mission, and they’d just as soon leave or find some other jobs or retire. And now it’s a sense of, I don’t know if it’s the word relief, as much as it’s hope. You know, I find a sense of energy when I go talk to people that they just fired up to get going with the job.
DEADLINE: I hear you with that, but that’s inside baseball to most. Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, there are a lot of people in LA County who can’t get any real response from a 911 call, who see justice as being very selective. And to be honest, the extremes have overwhelmed real dialogue, and they feel they’ve been abandoned…
HOCHMAN: Unfortunately, it’s not a shock that people feel that way, because the feeling is based in reality.
DEADLINE: Certainly, people whose families have suffered tragic or fatal consequences from crime, like Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, one of your biggest supporters in the campaign, know that feeling strongly. Then what do you, and I mean you, what do you do about that?
HOCHMAN: What I say to that is that part of striking the right balance is having the right set of procedures and the right D.A in place.
DEADLINE: Which is what?
HOCHMAN: If a DA came in and said, instead of decarceration, we’re now going to emphasize mass incarceration again, If they said, we want to send a message to the criminal element that we’re just going to put them in jail, literally, until we get the courts telling us we put too many people in jail. I’m telling you I reject that, I reject both extremes. I reject extreme policies. I come down in the middle. I call it the hard work middle, or the hard middle, because it requires you to do the work. Blanket policies are inherently reckless and lazy. The middle requires you look at each case, individually. That’s what I’m going to do.
DEADLINE: Let’s talk about a big individual case on your desk: the Menendez brothers.
HOCHMAN: I knew this was coming …
DEADLINE: I know you knew, because you yourself have spoken about the brothers and the renewed interest in their case for several months now as momentum has accelerated for a reexamination of their case – something your predecessor picked up on in the closing days of the campaign.
HOCHMAN: Yes …
DEADLINE: Even before the election, even as then DA Gascón pressed ahead with resentencing recommendations and more, you said you weren’t going to make any promises. You said that when you got here, you’re going to look at the files and you’re going to look at the cases. Just before Thanksgiving, even before you took office, Judge Michael Jesic pushed a previously scheduled resentencing hearing to the end of January as a courtesy towards you and your office to give you the time to decide what you wanted to do… so where do things stand with the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez with you?
HOCHMAN: First of all, the courtesy by Judge Jesic is much appreciated, much appreciated. We have begun the process. I have begun the process.
DEADLINE: What has that entailed?
HOCHMAN: I’ve gotten access now to more and more of the files that were confidential, the transcripts from the actual trials. We’re looking through the testimony, as opposed to the highlights of testimony that people have been happy to share. We’re looking at the law dealing with resentencing as well as the law dealing with the habeas situation. Do you know the difference?
DEADLINE: I do.
HOCHMAN: They’re different. You know, there can be different results depending on which way the law actually plays out. Once I get up to speed on my end, I’m going to call Mark Geragos, invite him to come in and make any level presentation he wants. I’ll make the same offer to any victim family member if they want a personal audience with me.
DEADLINE: A lot of the family have been quite vocal about seeing the brothers released after almost 30 years in prison, but it’s no secret that family is divided.
HOCHMAN: Yes, I’ve spoken to the lawyer for the brother of Kitty Menendez, who has a different opinion than the rest of the family and filed different paperwork for it, you know?
Anyway, at the end of it, we’ll make the call, because the resentencing law is somewhat unique for California, and it operates on much different principles than most people really understand. In other words, that once this process is triggered by a DA’s motion, because the defense can’t trigger it on its own, then the judge gets enormous amounts of discretion on what the judge wants to do. Still has to look at the interests of justice, rehabilitation, the gravity of the offense to begin with, different data points as the law has multiple factors, but it is still somewhat amorphous.
DEADLINE: This may seem pedantic, but do you think we’d be talking about the Menendez brothers now if Ryan Murphy and Netflix hadn’t made a hit show about them?
HOCHMAN: That I don’t know one or the other. You’ll have to talk to my predecessor about that. But here’s where I like the attention. I like the attention in that, you know, if people are focused on criminal justice issues, that is a net positive for our society. If it’s the Menendez case that got them interested, to at least start exploring these, these different types of issues, then that’s good.
DEADLINE: On that note, there’s a big difference between campaigning and holding the office, so with the knowledge of the reality out of there that many people in many different parts of the county feel, now that you are in the DA’s chair, what are the biggest challenges you have set for yourself?
HOCHMAN: Initial challenges is getting the two main drivers of criminal justice and enforcement, back on track.
That’s my own office. Start with that. I mean, I’m entering an office that, at one point voted 98% to support their boss’s recall. That’s almost unheard of.
So, these folks have been, again, enormously receptive to a newcomer, to someone who’s basically said to them that the greatest asset of the DA’s office is not the courtrooms, the cases or the computers, but the prosecutors themselves. To me, the mission of the DA is to maximize the greatest asset, which is that. So, I basically said: look, I have your back. You need training, you need resources, you need credit for the good work you’ve been doing. I can deliver on all that. Getting their trust back has been something that’s been absolutely a Day One project, and we’re well on the way. You then need to convert that over to law enforcement, because it’s great to be able to prosecute the cases. But ultimately, the pipeline of getting cases to the DA’s office is law enforcement.
DEADLINE: To that, one of the elements of the Menendez case is this notion that society has changed dramatically since the 1990s in our attitude and response to rape and sexual violence to men. There is a notion among some supporters of the brothers, that with the assaults they allegedly suffered from their father and the role that played in their shotgun killing of him and their mother, we would look at what happened differently today, with a possible different outcome. What’s your perspective on that historical curve theory?
HOCHMAN: Well, the changing values in society, certainly the changing technology that helps you do a better job of truly understanding who’s guilty and who’s not. I think it’s a bit simplistic to say that society back in the ’90s, didn’t recognize sexual abuse of young boys or men. I think it did. I think there’s plenty of cases that this office and offices across the state were bringing to the courts
DEADLINE: That’s not the mantra you hear from Menendez lawyer Mark Garagos.
HOCHMAN: Mr. Geragos has been very happy to repeat that mantra, and the media has repeated Mr. Geragos’ mantra. What I’m saying is that whether or not the mantra is actually true, is that no one’s actually looked, that I’m aware, to see what types of cases, in the volume of cases that were brought where the victims were young boys or young men.
They make it seem like it never happened. I know for a fact it did.
That’s part one of your question, which is the assumption that this was never prosecuted, so that the social mores at the time is that it couldn’t happen. Second assumption of your question is that in the second trial, that the issue wasn’t raised, because, again, that’s Mr. Geragos mantra, which the media has repeated.
DEADLINE: It sounds like you view it as a battle on two fronts …
HOCHMAN: Do you know whether or not Erik Menendez testified in the second trial?
DEADLINE: Off the top of my head, I do not, I believe he did …
HOCHMAN: He did, for seven trial days.
Probably, if I had to guess, close to 40 hours of testimony where he went into great detail, as he did in the first trial. Incident by incident by incident, between the ages, I think of about six to 18 of what his father had done to him. Andy Cano, the cousin, he testified in the second trial for days, also about the sexual abuse that was experienced by Erik that he was aware of. So, the notion, again, the mantra, that sexual abuse wasn’t explored in the second trial that the judge kept out all the evidence actually isn’t true.
DEADLINE: So why do you think that has become so accepted then?
HOCHMAN: I mean, I’ve been doing this for 34 years, I’ve seen it. The media is in search of simple narratives, conflicting narratives, and so it adopted the Geragos narrative. Which was very smart, very creative. It’s basically that the trial was all about sexual abuse, that their response was because of sexual abuse. It’s that a conviction was only attained because the evidence of sexual abuse didn’t occur in the second trial, but occurred in the first trial, and therefore that the underlying conviction is wrong and should be fixed. Very simple narrative. What makes it a little bit more complicated? And that’s why the media would have to do additional work. No offense to your profession.
DEADLINE: That’s okay, my profession is the enemy of the people in some circles, like yours is in some other circles, so your criticism is just fine. With that perspective you’ve outlined, how will you approach looking at this case?
HOCHMAN: Knowing the Geragos narrative is absolutely wrong, the issues that we’ll be looking at for the trial will be whether or not the these two young men faced an immediate threat to their life? Why they got to that point? How they got to the point is irrelevant for the trial. For the convictions, maybe not irrelevant. By the way, certainly for resentencing, and it actually plays a different role in resentencing.
As I said, Erik Menendez was able to testify in great detail about all the sexual abuse he experienced. He was even able to testify about sexual abuse that Lyle experienced. He was even able to testify about the fact that Lyle purportedly confronted his father, their father, about this whole issue, which is why they had some level of fear that the father was going to kill them. All that was presented to the jury, and the jury still convicted them both of first-degree murder.
DEADLINE: Heading towards next month’s resentencing hearing, what are you preparing right now?
HOCHMAN: Well, ultimately, the resentencing law allows rehabilitation to come into a mix, so it’s not just whether or not the underlying crime was proven and sustained on appeal, and all that. You now are entering in the concept of rehabilitation and the interests of Justice on top of that. And you do this with a fairly vague standard that doesn’t give judges particular guidance on how to evaluate all these factors only to figure out whether or not someone is a threat to society, poses a danger to society, and otherwise has been rehabilitated, so and it’s somewhat California unique in that respect.
So, we’re going to go through all that evidence and weigh all the factors and ultimately come to the judge and say, to the judge, here’s all the records. Here are your options. And make sure that whatever decision is ultimately made is the best-informed decision possible.
DEADLINE: On the surface, it seems like all your office does sometimes is manage high profile cases, the Danny Mastersons, Scientology and the like. Then there is the matter of Harvey Weinstein, who was successful in having his East Coast conviction tossed out on appeal and is now awaiting, depending on his health, a new trial next year. Weinstein is also trying to get his 2022 conviction here on sex crimes and the 16 year sentence it carried with it dismissed. So, my question is what will your office do if you have to face another Weinstein trial?
HOCHMAN: Again, I come from the world of doing the work in every case. So, even if something gets media attention, certainly we’re going to make sure that we get that right. But we’re going to make sure we get it right, even if there’s no media attention.
With respect to Weinstein, it would depend on how they reversed it, assuming there is a reversal, which is a huge assumption, by the way.
DEADLINE: Point taken.
HOCHMAN: But if they reversed it based on saying that, I’ll just make up a number. Let’s say there was four different other bad acts that were let in, and they say two of them don’t meet the legal standard. Two will be let in. Let’s say they’re requiring a new trial, assuming we then proceed to trial and there’s no settlement. In the meantime, we would come up with a trial strategy that would now be in accord with the new rules set forth by the appellate court in that particular case. We would be very convinced, or we wouldn’t bring the case, that we could win that case beyond a reasonable doubt.
DEADLINE: When it comes to doubt, and I say this to you with your past life in George W. Bush’s DOJ, there is a lot of doubt, a lot of fear among the undocumented in LA that once Trump gets back in power, the wild dogs will be off the leash and they will be rounded up for his mass deportations, put in camps in the desert like Japanese Americans were in World War II. What do you say to those in this county who see a D.A. who served in a Republican administration, who, even though he ran as an Independent for D.A., ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for state Attorney General, and ask, will this guy protect us?
HOCHMAN: Here’s what those people should know. They first should know a little history. History is a scarce resource on people’s consideration. But we don’t have to go back that far. I’ll go seven years, 2017. The California Value Act, SB54 is a sanctuary state legislation. If you compare that sanctuary state legislation against, for instance, the sanctuary city ordinance had just passed, there’s almost no difference. It’s almost symbolic now. SB54 was challenged by the Trump administration in the courts back in 2018 or 2019 and when they challenged it, they lost.
Now, now we’re going to go into a little bit more ancient history.
The LAPD has had a provision for years that says that it will not arrest someone on just an immigration violation, and it won’t even ask them when they’re being arrested, whether or not they’re here legally or documented or undocumented, here legally or illegally. That provision is 40-plus years old at this point. 45 years old. So, the fears that people have, I get it. I get the understanding that if Donald Trump comes in and says, we’re going to be doing massive deportation, how is he exactly going to do it? Is that going to involve local law enforcement giving up, the undocumented grandmother who’s cleaning houses or whatnot, there’s nothing to suggest that, that there’s any law, state law that will allow local law enforcement to do that.
DEADLINE: I understand what you are saying, but let me ask again, can people, the undocumented, who work and live among us all over this county, in this City of Angels in all industries, can they look to you in these times, and amidst Trump’s threats, for protection?
HOCHMAN: The answer is yes, I will protect all legal rights that immigrants have in this county to the fullest extent, full stop. I don’t need to go beyond that statement.
I will uphold all the laws that are out there, including the ones that protect immigrants here in Los Angeles County, full stop. You know, if you’re asking whether or not I will enforce the sanctuary state laws, I will enforce the sanctuary state law and now the sanctuary city laws.
Like I said, you can enforce the sanctuary city laws by just enforcing the sanctuary state laws, because they were mostly symbolic, they just repeated what was already done seven years ago, that the courts have already affirmed, and by saying that the courts have affirmed it. But make sure you understand what I’m saying is that on the same arguments that the Trump administration may or may not attack the current laws.
They’ve already been attacked here.
The Ninth Circuit has already weighed in. So, unless it somehow gets back to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit controls the Western federal states, including California. So, the sanctuary state law is the law of this state, and right now, at least there’s no federal law that trumps it, which is a bad pun, I know.
DEADLINE: With that, and just days after taking over as DA of a county that is larger and more populated that most states, D.A. Hochman are you running for Governor in 2026?
HOCHMAN: [LAUGHS] I will be beyond thrilled if I could just do this job, hopefully, really, really well. So, no, I absolutely tell you I am not running for that job.
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