18-04-2025
Menendez Brothers Resentencing Now Off Until Next Month As Lawyers & Judge Look Over Parole Board Report Ordered By Gavin Newsom
The Menendez brothers will still get their day in court, but the long-incarcerated siblings will have to wait until next month to see whether they will be resentenced for the 1989 shotgun murder of their parents.
With the brothers joining via video, LA Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic initially decided Thursday morning to go forward with the scheduled two-day resentencing session and cast aside an eleventh-hour motion of continuance from the LA County District Attorney's office over a state parole board risk-assessment report ordered earlier this year by Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, after some fireworks between Nathan Hochman's office and defense attorneys in and outside the Van Nuys courthouse, the judge has pushed back any resentencing hearing until at least May 9.
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With all sides getting an opportunity to look over the semi-completed report and contemplate its admissibility, that hearing next month could be closed and take place in the judge's chambers due to sensitive material in the report. In fact, the May 9 hearing could be consumed with motions from both sides and never even get around to resentencing.
Also, the confidential and unfinished report is but one of many assets the parole board will use to assess whether to keep the siblings in or out of prison.
Back in the media and public 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, 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.
Prosecutors for the DA's office and the defense's Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman were still conferring with Jesic for a few minutes after the decision to delay until May was made, but it was clear to all that this was over for now. Originally, even though Jesic said he would not have a decision this week, the resentencing was supposed to run today and Friday. Already delayed several times because of elections, wildfires and more, those dates have now been scrubbed from the court calendar.
None of the developments please the defense and the Menendez family, many of whom traveled from afar to be at this week's hearings.
'It's become a mockery,' Freedman said of Hochman and his office outside the courtroom after the pause was put in place. 'Does he have a personal grudge against Lyle and Erik?' the attorney added, noting the defense will be filing paperwork to have the DA's office recused from the case.
In court today, Geragos said he had 'lost faith' in Hochman to conduct himself fairly, saying he was going to move 'to have the District Attorney thrown off this case.' Arguing against the risk assessment being introduced into the hearing, Geragos told the court 'the family is very upset but they are willing to put their lives on hold for a little bit longer' for the brothers.
Outside after today's hearing was called off, he ramped it up and called the matter a 'charade' by a 'DA who made up his mind and did no hard work.'
After the break, Jesic told the lawyers and Menendez family members that there could be material in the risk-assessment report that may constitute evidence and alter any questioning of witnesses. Even with unresolved issues of the DA's office being accused of being abusive to the family and violating their rights as victims by unexpectedly showing bloody 1989 crime scene photos in court last week, the judge made it clear that the delay was to ensure the report is treated with the utmost care.
This latest delay comes after a two-hour break that ended at 1:30 p.m. as prosecutors, the defense and judge bartered and petitioned the governor's office for the full report and the waiving of privilege to see it. Weighing a potential clemency for the brothers from their 1996 sentence of life without parole, Newsom in late February ordered the assessment as part of an overall reexamination of the case.
That reexamination will culminate June 13 with individual hearings for each brother before the parole board.
The date is important because that is why the report was shared with Deputy DA Habib Balian, who is overseeing the resentencing and the case's parole aspects for Hochman. Under California regulations, a portion of the risk-assessment report is to be handed over to the principal parties for review 60 days before any clemency hearing and is subject to correction and updating — that is why Balian got it earlier this week.
After that June hearing, and the political winds of the Golden State, Newsom would make his clemency decision. Elected in a landslide last year over George Gascón, who started the resentencing process the current DA is seeking to blunt, Hochman today reiterated his contention that the brothers have after all these decades not 'come clean with … information' on 'why they brutally killed their parents.'
No one said it today in Van Nuys, but it is worth noting that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.
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