The Los Angeles County District Prosecutor, Nathan Hochman, said Monday that he is asking the court to withdraw the motion of the previous district prosecutor for Lyle and Erik Menéndez, calling the personal defense claims of the brothers starts from a litany of “lies.”
“We are prepared to move forward” with the audience about his case of resontent, Hochman said at a press conference on Monday. “However, we are asking the court to withdraw the motion of the previous district prosecutor of resentment, because we believe that there are legitimate reasons and the interests of justice justify that withdrawal.”
A resentment audience is scheduled for the brothers, who fulfill life without the possibility of probation.
In these photos of reservations taken on October 10, 2024, Erik and Lyle Menéndez are shown.
CRDC.
The request to withdraw the resontent motion is “based on the current state of the registration and the current and continuous failure of the Menéndez brothers to show a complete vision and accept full responsibility,” Hochman said in a statement. “If they finally presented and admitted unequivocally and sincerely and completely accept the responsibility of their lies of self -defense and the attempt to subordinate the perjury in which they dedicated themselves, then the court should weigh such information on the analysis of rehabilitation and resentment, as people will.”
Hochman said his decision is produced after reviewing the transcripts of trial judgments, prison records and the testimony of video recorded on video, as well as meeting with members of the Menéndez family, defense lawyers and previous prosecutors.
Hochman emphasized the premeditation, noting that the brothers led San Diego days before the murders to buy weapons with a false identification and the night of the murders, planned a alibi and went to buy film tickets, he said.
The Los Angeles County District Prosecutor, Nathan Hochman, talks about the resentment of Erik and Lyle Menéndez for the murders of their parents during a press conference in the center of Los Angeles, on January 3, 2025.
Damian Dovarganes/AP, file
After José and Kitty Menéndez received a deadly shot, the brothers allegedly fired them in the bruises to allegedly try to make the murders look like a shooting on a gang, Hochman said.
The brothers “also had the presence of mind to collect all the shotgun shells” to try to hide their digital footprints, and then left their bloody clothes and the weapons, said Hochman.
Hochman said the brothers told 20 lies and admitted four; He said that 16 lies remain “without being recognized.”
Hochman emphasized that the brothers changed their history several times.
Initially, the brothers proclaimed their innocence and said the murders may have been the successes of the mafia.
Erik Menéndez, on the left, and is Brother Lyle, in front of his house of Beverly Hills on November 30, 1989.
Los Angeles Times through Getty Images, Archive
The truth about the responsible brothers occurred after Erik Menéndez confessed to his therapist and that the confession tape was delivered to the police.
“They convinced, not only the media, not only to the police, but to their family and their friends who were 100% innocent of these crimes, until these tapes finally came out,” said Hochman.
The “next iteration of history” was when Lyle Menéndez supposedly asked his girlfriend to affirm that José Menéndez drugged her and raped her, Hochman said.
Later, the brothers said Erik Menéndez was raped by his father and Lyle Menéndez was raped by his mother, he said.
In the trial, the brothers affirmed self -defense, saying that they suffered sexual abuse of their father and believe that their parents were going to kill them.
But Hochman said Monday that “the defense of personal defense was a manufacture.”
The own defense was not mentioned in confession to the therapist, according to Hochman.
“What Erik said is that [his father] It was a controlling and dominant force, and that is the reason, “said Hochman.” He said the mother would witness the crime, so she had to die, [and she] It was so miserable because the father had an adventure … [and] The mother could not live without the father. “
Erik Menéndez with his lawyer Leslie Abramson and his brother Lyle Menéndez in Los Angeles, on March 9, 1994.
Ted Soqui/Sygma through Getty Images, Archive
The “brothers have never been clean and admitted that they lied about their self -defense and subornate perjury and tried to subordinate perjury for their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently violating Lyle’s girlfriend, his mother poisoning the family and his attempt to obtain a gang the day before the murders,” he said in a statement.
At Monday’s press conference, Hochman often referred to the 2022 decision of the governor of California Gavin Newsom to deny probation to Robert F. Kennedy’s murderer, Sirhan Sirhan, citing that case as the precedent that the judge should consider with the Menéndez brothers.
Although Sirhan, like the Menéndez brothers, spent decades in prison rehabilitating himself, including the achievement of titles and participating in the prison programs, and had support letters, Newsom denied Sun Sunan the probation because “he did not exhibit an idea and completely accepted the responsibility of his murder of Kennedy,” he made it “an unreasonable risk of danger to the community,” he said Hochman.
The Court must “analyze whether the lack of complete vision of the Menéndez brothers and the lack of total responsibility for their murders … the other factors that justify a ressence such as the duration of Menéndez’s time in prison, their age at the time of murders, their education and any sexual abuse they experienced, their extensive rehabilitation efforts in prison, including educational prison, involved in prison prison and prison prison Prison of the prison of the prison of the prison of the prison of the prison of the prison of the prison of the prison prison of the prisoners and his prison on the electrical prison.
In October, the then District Prosecutor of the County of the George Gascón announced that it supported the resentment for the brothers. Gascón recommended that their life sentences without the possibility of removal of probation, and said they should be sentenced by murder, which would be a 50 -year sentence to life imprisonment. Because both brothers were less than 26 years old at the time of crimes, they would be eligible for probation immediately with the new prayer.
Erik Menéndez and his brother Lyle (R) listen during an audience prior to the trial, on December 29, 1992, in Los Angeles after the two declared themselves innocent in the deaths of a shotgun of August 1989 of their parents, José and Mary Louise Menéndez.
Vince Bucci/AFP through Getty Images
The Prosecutor’s Office said that their resentment recommendations take into account many factors, including rehabilitation in prison and abuse or trauma that contributed to the crime. Gascón praised the work that Lyle and Erik Menéndez did behind bars to rehabilitate and help other inmates.
Weeks after Gascón’s announcement, he lost his career for re -election against Hochman. When Hochman assumed the position on December 3, he promised to review all the facts before reaching his own decision.
Hochman’s announcement on Monday comes days after one of the cousins of the brothers, Tamara Goodell, criticized the district prosecutor in a letter to the civil rights division of the United States prosecutor’s office.
Goodell accused Hochman of being “hostile, derogatory and condescending” during two meetings in January with family members who wish to free the brothers. She said that “the lack of compassion was palpable, and the family felt not only ignored, but rather intimidated and revicts more.” Goodell wants Hochman to have eliminated and the case delivered to the Office of the Attorney General.
Joan Andersen Vandermolen, Centro, speaks with the media surrounded by relatives of Erik and Lyle Menéndez, and lawyer Mark Geragos, to the extreme left, and lawyer Bryan Freedman, to the right, during a press conference after an audience in Los Angeles, on November 25, 2024.
Damian Dovarganes/AP, file
This case dates back to 1989, when Lyle Menéndez, then 21 years old, and Erik Menéndez, then 18 years old, shot and killed their parents, Kitty and José Menéndez, in the house of Beverly Hills of the family.
His first judgment ended in a null trial. Lyle and Erik Menéndez were sentenced in 1996 after their second trial.
The brothers were sentenced to two consecutive perpetual chain terms without probation.
In addition to resentment, the brothers have been following two other ways towards freedom.
One is his request for habeas corpus, which they presented in 2023 for a review of two new evidence not presented at the trial: a letter that Erik Menéndez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detail his alleged abuse of his father, and the accusations of a former member of the band of children who revealed in 2023 that he was raped by Jose Menendez.
Hochman announced in February that he asked the court to deny the request of habeas corpus, arguing that the new evidence is not credible or admissible.
The third way to freedom is through the clemency application of the brothers, which has been submitted to Newsom.
On February 26, Newsom announced that it is ordering the Board of probation to carry out a “90 -day comprehensive risk assessment” on whether the brothers represent “an unreasonable risk for the public” if clemency and released are granted.
“There is no guarantee of results here,” said Newsom. “But this process simply provides more transparency … as well as provides us with more due diligence before making any determination of clemency.”
