Next week’s potential resentencing hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez has been postponed, and a hearing on the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office’s motion to withdraw a resentencing petition is instead set for April 11 in the Van Nuys Courthouse, City News Service has learned.
Depending on what the court decides on April 11, a resentencing hearing — originally scheduled for next Thursday and Friday — may be set for April 17 and 18.
“As stated before, we are prepared to go forward if the court determines it has jurisdiction to do so on the court’s own motion for resentencing while requesting that the court allow the People to withdraw its resentencing motion filed by the prior District Attorney for the ‘legitimate reasons’ set forth the People’s withdrawal request filed on March 10,” District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement Friday.
State parole boards, meanwhile, will conduct separate hearings for the brothers on June 13, then send their reports to Gov. Gavin Newsom to help him decide whether they should receive clemency, Newsom said.
“We will submit that report to the judge for the resentencing, and that will weigh in to our independent analysis of whether or not to move forward with the clemency application to support a commutation of this case,” Newsom said on his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” on Tuesday.
The broadcast came one day after Hochman announced that his office will oppose the release of the brothers from state prison. The district attorney said prosecutors have offered a path to the Menendez brothers in which they would have to “accept complete responsibility” for their criminal actions and acknowledge that their claim that the murders were committed in self-defense was “phony.”
“But for now, while the Menendez brothers persist in telling these lies for the last over 30 years about their self-defense defense and persist in insisting that they did not suborn any perjury or attempt to suborn perjury, then they do not meet the standards for re-sentencing,” Hochman said.
“They do not meet the standards for rehabilitation. They have not exhibited the full insights and accepted complete responsibility for their actions and as a result … they pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community, and the re-sentencing should not therefore be granted.”
Erik Menendez, now 54, and Lyle, 57, were convicted of the Aug. 20, 1989, killings of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, in Beverly Hills.
Newsom called Hochman’s announcement “very significant” but “it doesn’t fundamentally change the facts as it relates to the independent investigation in my office or the Board of Parole hearings.”
“It just changes the recommendation from … the previous D.A. in L.A. supporting it and one now with the current D.A. opposing it,” Newsom said.
Newsom said that with the exception of brief clips on social media he has not watched dramatizations of the Menendez case or documentaries on it “because I don’t want to be influenced by them.”
“I just want to be influenced by the facts,” Newsom said.