LA County’s top prosecutor is formally opposing an effort by the Menendez brothers to be granted a new trial.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who has consistently opposed efforts by the convicted killers to be released from prison, submitted his office’s response to Erik and Lyle Menendez’s habeas petition for a new trial. The brothers has served about 35 years of a life prison sentence for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.
One of the possible avenues to freedom is the 2023 petition by the brothers’ attorneys, who pointed to two new pieces of evidence they contend corroborate the brothers’ allegations of long-term sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The petition essentially asks the brothers be granted a new trial.
In a statement released Thursday after the District Attorney’s Office submitted a 132-page opposition to the petition, Hochman said the defense’s filing “does not come close to meeting the factual or legal standard to warrant a new trial.”
“The overwhelming evidence of the Menendez brothers’ premeditated, deliberate, willful and brutal murders of their parents the night of Aug. 20, 1989, leading to their convictions for first-degree murder with special circumstances, is not in any way challenged by evidence that is not ‘new’ or ‘material’ or ‘credible’ or ‘presented without substantial delay’ that would more likely than not have changed the outcome of this case,” the district attorney said.
Hochman said the brothers maintained throughout their trials that they acted in self-defense, and the latest claims about new evidence amount to nothing more than a “Hail Mary” effort to obtain a new trial.
In the prosecution’s filing, Deputy District Attorney Seth Carmack wrote, “There are few murder cases in which the evidence of planning and premeditation is as stark as that presented in this case. Petitioners confessed on tape to murdering their parents, revealing the extent of their forethought and deliberation.”
In that 2023 petition, attorneys for the brothers wrote that the new evidence “not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that — in fact — he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988 — just as the defense had argued all along.”
They added that “newly discovered evidence directly supports the defense presented at trial and just as directly undercuts the state’s case.”
Erik Menendez, 54, and Lyle Menendez, 57, have other options to pursue for their release from prison after Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic re-sentenced them in May to 50 years to life in prison, making them immediately eligible for parole consideration because they were younger than 26 when the crime occurred. Erik Menendez is set for a parole suitability hearing Aug. 21 at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Lyle Menendez is set for a parole suitability hearing at the same prison the following day.
If the parole board recommends the brothers for parole, the issue will then be forwarded to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have 90 days to review the matter and could reject the parole grant. Attorneys for the brothers have also submitted a request for Newsom to consider granting clemency to the pair.
The brothers’ first trial ended with jurors unable to reach verdicts, deadlocking between first-degree murder and lesser charges including manslaughter. The second trial, which began in October 1995 and lacked much of the testimony centered on allegations of sexual abuse by Jose Menendez, ended with both brothers being convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy.
Source: NBC Los Angeles
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