The new Los Angeles County district attorney said he would ask the court to withdraw the resilient petition proposed by his predecessor, in the case of two brothers, Lyle and Eric Menendez, who brutally murdered their parents more than 35 years ago.
However, it is expected that similar efforts launched by the court will advance, and the Chief Prosecutor said his office is ready for a hearing on the efforts. This means that the process continues.
So the announcement by district attorney Nathan J. Hochman at a press conference in downtown Los Angeles is largely iconic. This is a well-known statement of values ​​from a top prosecutor elected in November for his commitment to taking a more stringent approach to crime.
It overturned an effort launched last year by Hochman's predecessor, George Gascon. George Gascon is a politically progressive county prosecutor who asked the judge to formally resent his brother to qualify for parole.
The problem is far from being solved. In addition to the review launched by the court of resemble, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering a generous petition in the case individually. He took action last month to move the process forward.
Hochman spent much of his press conference on the horrifying details of the murders his brothers had done, and how they covered it. The brothers lied over and over the years, he said.
“If we look at that time, they don't have the ability to see whether Menendez has shown complete insight and full responsibility for their crimes,” Hochmann said.
In 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez watched television in the living room of their mansion in Beverly Hills, California, eating ice cream when their sons were killed by their sons in a shotgun blast.
The Menendez Brothers' Saga has long captured the public imagination, with two television series about their stories appearing on Netflix last year, bringing new attention to the incident and bolstering legal efforts to free the brothers.
At the same time, in the age of social media, the incident attracted the attention of young people who were not alive at the time of the crime and mobilized online to promote the release of the brothers.
Currently, there are three aggressive legal avenues for reexamining cases that could lead to Lyle and Eric regaining their freedom.
One was the focus of Monday's press conference. The court launched these cases themselves, and separately, Mr. Gascone filed a petition last year to promote res tinsing. Gascon's petition argued that the brothers deserve a chance of parole for their exemplary prison actions. Gascon said the brothers “paid the debts to society,” and asked the court to resent the brothers on 50 years of prison conditions, rather than life without parole. The change was under the age of 26 when the crime occurred, so the siblings could automatically qualify for parole (Lyle was 21 and Eric was 18).
On Monday, Hochman said the court-initiated lawsuit would move forward. (A Los Angeles Superior Court judge had scheduled hearings on March 20th and 21st.) However, Hochmann said his office would ask the court to withdraw Gascone's res tinsing claim.
The second path is the generous petition on the desk of Democrat Newsom. He showed that he supports a reconsideration of the case. He recently ordered the state parole board to conduct a risk assessment and determined whether the brother would be a threat to public safety if he was released.
On Monday, Newsom's office tweaked the state's parole process. This change allows the Parole Board to make recommendations to the governor about commutations, as was already done in the Menendez case.
“Justice may be blind, but we should not be in the dark when we decide if someone is rehabilitated, safe and ready to leave prison,” Newsom said in a statement. “This new process will help ensure that victims and district attorneys are part of the commute process and improve public safety by front-loading risk assessments, as in Menendez's case.”
The third path is a habeas corps petition seeking a new trial, citing that newly discovered evidence of sexual abuse by Lyle and Eric's father, Jose Menendez, would have altered the outcome of their trial if it was available. This is considered the most unlikely path, and Hochman announced in February that he opposed the new trial, saying that sexual abuse allegations did not change the outcome of the first trial.
The brothers are currently serving life sentences at a state prison near San Diego, with corrections officers and others filling their brothers' prison files with praise for their work. The brothers began working with self-help and meditation groups, working with wheelchair-bound prisoners to earn their university degrees and painted murals as part of the “green space” project.
The brothers' extended family gathers in their cause, saying that Lyle and Eric have endured a huge trauma at their father's hands, and deserves the opportunity to rebuild their lives outside of prison. Uncle Milton Andersen, one of the few families who publicly opposed the bid for siblings' freedom, passed away recently.
Earlier this year, a group of more than 20 families insisted Hochmann that the Menendez brothers deserve release. However, the relationship between the family and the prosecutor has since become sour.
In a letter filed last week with the US Lawyer's Office, the brother's cousin Tamara Lucero Goodell argued that her rights had been violated by Hochmann during those meetings. According to her letter, prosecutors re-erupted their families by ashaming them with “verbal and emotional” and “boring and beloved tone.”
In a TMZ podcast co-hosted by lawyers, the brothers said last month that once they are released, they could continue some of the work they did behind the bar in the outside world. They said some of their relatives were worried as they waited for a hearing and decision about their fate, but Lyle Menendez said he and his brother remained “cautiously hopeful.”
“Eric and I, we've been in jail for 35 years,” he said.
