by Nathan Hochman, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, officially opposed the convicted murderers Erik and Lyle Menendez’s most recent request for a new trial on Thursday. Hochman has long fought the menendez’s attempts to be released from Otay Mesa prison.
For the August 20, 1989, murders of Jose and Mary Louise Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home, Lyle Menendez, 57, and Erik Menendez, 54, have been imprisoned for about 35 years without the chance of release. After years of mistreatment, including claimed sexual assault by their father, the Menendez brothers say the murders were carried out.
Judge Michael Jesicre of the Los Angeles Superior Court sentenced them to 50 years to life in prison in May. Since they were under 26 at the time of the crime, they are immediately eligible for parole consideration.
The brothers’ parole recommendation will be sent to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has ninety days to consider the case and may decide not to give the brothers freedom. The brothers’ lawyers have also asked Newsom to take the pair into consideration for clemency.
The hearings for the brothers’ parole are scheduled on August 21–22.
Attorneys for the Menendez brothers also filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 2023, effectively requesting that they be given a new trial, as a further option for potential release.
The brothers’ lawyers cited two new pieces of evidence in their 2023 petition that they believe support the brothers’ claims of long-term sexual abuse at the hands of their father: a letter purportedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano in early 1989 or late 1988, and recent claims made by Roy Rossell, a former member of the boy band Menudo, that Jose Menendez sexually abused him as a teenager.
However, the District Attorney’s Office responded to the appeal on Thursday with a 132-page document, claiming that the brothers confessed to the crimes and that the murders were obviously premeditated.
Get neighborhood news in your inbox. It’s free and enlightening.
Become one of the 20,000+ individuals who receive breaking news alerts and the Times of San Diego in their inbox every day at 8 a.m.
Weekly updates from San Diego communities have also been provided! You acknowledge and agree to the terms by clicking “Sign Up.” Choose from the options below.
Hochman said in a statement, “We have determined that this petition does not even approach meeting the factual or legal standard to warrant a new trial after conducting a thorough and exhaustive review of the Menendez brothers’ habeas corpus petition and the alleged new evidence presented.” No evidence that is not new, material, credible, or presented without a significant delay that would have changed the case’s outcome in any way challenges the overwhelming evidence of the Menendez brothers’ premeditated, deliberate, willful, and brutal murders of their parents on the evening of August 20, 1989, which resulted in their convictions for first-degree murder under special circumstances.
According to him, the brothers insisted during their trials that they acted in self-defense, and the most recent allegations of fresh evidence are only a last-ditch attempt to secure a new trial.
This article was provided to by City News Service.
