What to Know
- Lyle and Erik Menendez are serving life sentences for their 1996 convictions in the 1989 murders of their parents at the family's Beverly Hills mansion.
- Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan says his office is ready to move ahead with a resentencing hearing, but that he is withdrawing his predecessor's motion on resentencing.
- In October, then-District Attorney George Gascón recommended the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole.
- Hochman previously said his office will oppose a new trial for the brothers, a legal avenue separate from resentencing.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed the California Board of Parole to begin its risk assessment investigation into the application for commutation by the Menendez brothers.
LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Monday that his office is ready to move forward with a resentencing hearing in the decades-old Menendez brothers murder case.
At a morning news conference, Hochman said his office is prepared to move ahead with the hearing for the court's initiation of resentencing, which could result in a change to the life prison sentences being served by Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, Menendez for the 1989 shotgun shooting deaths of their parents in the family's Beverly Hills mansion.
Hochman, however, added that he will ask the court to withdraw his predecessor's motion on resentencing. In October, then-District Attorney George Gascón recommended the brothers be resentenced to 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole.
Hochman called his predecessor's recommendation a “desperate political move.”
Hochman said his office has reviewed thousands of pages of trial transcripts from the brothers' two trials, prison records, hours of videotaped trial testimony, evidence and more to arrive at the decision.
"We are prepared to go forward with the court's initiated resentencing proceedings and look forward to a hearing on that motion," Hochman said Monday. "However, we are asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney's motion for resentencing because we believe that there are legitimate reasons in the interest of justice."
The resentencing hearing is scheduled for March 20 and 21 in Van Nuys, but could be delayed.
The district attorney's office issued a lengthy statement, explaining the move to withdraw Gascón's resentencing motion and move forward with the court-initiated hearing on resentencing.
"The basis for that request is that the prior motion did not examine or consider whether the Menendez brothers have exhibited full insight and taken complete responsibility for their crimes by continuing for the past over 30 years to lie about their claims of self-defense, that is, their fear that their mother and father were going to kill them the night of Aug. 20, 1989, justifying the brutal murders of their parents with shotgun blasts through the back of their father’s head, a point-blank blast through their mother’s face, and shots to their kneecaps to stage it as a Mafia killing," Hochman said. "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.
“The Court must consider such lack of full insight and lack of acceptance of responsibility for their murderous actions in deciding whether the Menendez brothers pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community."
Hochman's announcement comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom recently asked the state's parole board to evaluate the risk of possibly granting clemency, one of the paths to freedom for the brothers. Newsom could rule on the brothers' request for clemency or commutation of their sentences at any time.
Hochman said that he opposes any retrial for the brothers. Some of the brothers' family members criticized Hochman's recent comments at a news conference that included the release of video about the case.
“While we acknowledge that the district attorney has a duty to prosecute cases based on the law, we must ask, is he applying the laws that exist today with a modern trauma informed understanding, or is he relying on an outdated harmful framework that has since been rejected?” Anamaria Baralt, Jose Menendez' niece, said.
At the state level, the Menendez brothers petitioned the governor’s office to have their sentences commuted. Gov. Newsom said he directed the board of parole hearings to do a risk assessment investigation to see if the brothers pose a risk to public safety should they be released.
Family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez are speaking out one day after Governor Gavin Newsom called for a risk assessment investigation. Alex Rozier reports for NBC4 at 3pm on Feb. 27, 2025.
“My office conducts dozens and dozens of these clemency reviews on a consistent basis, but this process simply provides more transparency, which I think is important in this case, as well as provides us more due diligence before I make any determination for clemency,” Newsom said.
The governor’s office says that assessment could take a few months to complete.
The findings will be made available to the judge presiding in the resentencing motion and the LA County prosecutor's office, Newsom said. The analysis usually includes what led a person to commit the crime, their behavior in prison and whether they are likely to repeat the offense.
If, eventually, the brothers were recommended for parole by the state board, the matter would be placed before the governor for a final decision. The parole process involves several steps before reaching that point and offers one legal avenue toward freedom for Lyle and Erik Menendez, convicted in 1996 of the murders of their parents in 1989.
