Menendez Brothers Suddenly Withdraw Move To Toss L.A. DA Off Case; Resentencing Hearings Set For Next Week
UPDATED with more details: The latest showdown between Erik and Lyle Menendez and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has come down a pivotal notch.
In a surprising move Friday morning during a hearing in the Van Nuys, CA courthouse, Menendez brothers lawyer Mark Geragos withdrew a motion to remove DA Nathan Hochman and his entire office from the case. While more circumspect than usual with the media before today's hearing, the typically verbose Geragos didn't give a detailed reason before Judge Micheal Jesic for the move except to say he didn't want to see the resentencing process held up anymore than necessary.
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Menendez Brothers Resentencing: L.A. DA & Family's Lawyer Butt Heads Over Recusal Move & Media Hits A Week Ahead Of Pivotal Hearing
A media frenzy back in the 1990s, the case of the 1989 shotgun murder of the brothers' parents by the siblings has returned to the spotlight in no small part due to the success of the Netflix and Ryan Murphy series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story series and some documentaries claiming new evidence. To that new(ish) eveidence, the then 18- and 21-year-old Menendez brothers now insist the shooting of José Menendez and Kitty Menendez was self-defense against the ongoing sexual abuse by their record company executive father.
Later, outside court after today's hearing was done, Geragos said he pulled the motion for 'a strategic reason' that centers on creating a paper trail for the record, as well as the resentencing. With the recusal off the decks, the actual resentencing will now take place on May 13 and May 14.
It is unknown at the moment if the Menendez brothers will testify remotely or not at all.
What is apparent is that the resentencing hearing, which will end up with parole board eventually, is exactly a month before the individual June 13 reexamination hearings for each brother before the parole board that Gov. Newsom ordered back in February. At this point, either the resentencing hearing or the reexamination could become moot.
Earlier Friday, the incarcerated and now middle aged Lyle Menendez took to social media to lament the 'reindeer games' of the brothers hopes to be free, as well the direction he assumed events were going to go. 'So today is the day that issues will be worked out,' he said on Facebook from a state prison near San Diego where his brother also is housed. 'The motion to disqualify the DA will be heard and very very likely will be denied. Then, in chambers, issues regarding the CRA will be decided.'
The CRA is the Comprehensive Risk Assessment report ordered from the state parole board earlier this year by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a part of his clemency consideration for the Menendezs.
The partially completed document ended up in late April in the inbox of Deputy DA Habib Balian, who is overseeing the resentencing and the case's parole aspects for Hochman. The presence of the report and the implications it presented, legal and otherwise, tossed a grenade into the long delayed April 17 resentencing hearing for the brothers. To that, Judge Jesic shut that hearing down after just a few hours and pushed resolution to today.
Judge Jesic today said that he will consider the CRA as a part of any resentencing. How much it will come to play is TBD, as both Hochman and Geragos said outside court this morning. In a tone that has become commonplace in this matter, the resentencing rejecting DA lashed out at Geragos and fellow Menende attorney Bryan Freedman for 'spurious and salacious accusations' of misconduct and conflict of interest against him and his office.
The judge also denied the current DA's desire to drop the resentencing motion put forth by his predecessor George Gascón. With the line of not no, but 'not yet' on any reassessment of the Menendezs sentence, Hochman earlier this spring and last month stress his belief the brothers have not 'come clean with … information' after all these decades on 'why they brutally killed their parents.'
Today's session before comes a week after Hochman's office pushed back hard on the recusal motion in what has become a dogfight or sorts between the parties over altering the siblings' 1996 life without parole sentence. 'The defense conflates a conflict of interest with zealous advocacy,' a May 2 opposition filing from the DA's office proclaimed. 'In our adversarial system of justice, the parties often do not agree These disagreements are neither novel nor improper. They are often necessary hallmarks of our adversarial system's search for the truth.'
Indeed.
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