Judge allows Menendez brothers resentencing hearing to move forward

by · UPI

April 11 (UPI) -- A Southern California judge on Friday paved the way for a re-sentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Menendez in the murder of their parents in 1989.

In Van Nuys, Judge Michael Jesic denied a request by the Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to withdraw a previous motion that supported the re-sentencing of Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, Menendez.

They appeared via video in the courtroom.

Cooper Koch, who played Lyle Menendez in the recent Ryan Murphy Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story the renewed interest in the case, appeared in the courtroom.

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The brothers have spent 31 years in prison for the murders of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez.

Lyle Menendez was 18 and Erik 21 when they committed the crime on Aug. 20, 1989. They were arrested on March 8, 1990, and sentenced on Jan. 13, 1994, to life without parole in a second trial. There was a mistrial because a jury couldn't reach a unanimous decision.

Their case was under review last year by then-Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon. His recommendation was they should be resentenced to 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole.

But his successor, Hockman, said in March that the resentencing request should be withdrawn and the brothers shouldn't get out of jail.

The prosecution, during a three-hour presentation Friday that included graphic scene images, claimed the brothers "still hunker down" in their "bunker of lies and deception."

Hochman, who came into office in December, said because the "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 resentencing."

Last month, Hochman said he would reconsider resentencing only if the brothers admitted to "the full range of their criminal activity and all the lies that they have told about it."

The brothers' attorney, Marl Geragos, described Hochman as a "'90s Neanderthal" for dismissing the brothers' allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of their father.

"Today is a good day - justice won over politics," Garagos said in a news conference after the ruling. "It's been a long time coming.

"Today was probably the biggest day since [the brothers] have been in custody."

On Thursday, eight relatives of the Menendez brothers told ABC News they are unanimous in supporting Erik and Lyle Menendez's release from prison.

"They are like the boys that I didn't have," Terry Baralt, the brothers' aunt and Jose Menendez's sister, told ABC.

"It's time -- 35 years is a long time. It's a whole branch of my family erased. The ones that are gone and the ones that are still paying for it, which were kids."

In that second trial evidence of abuse the defendants said they were subjected to by their parents was excluded.

The brothers are seeking another avenue for legal relief through clemency from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

He directed a state parole board to determine whether the brothers would be a risk to public safety if released.

The clemency hearing is expected to happen on June 13.

The brothers accused their father of physical and sexual abuse.

Their attorneys argued in court that they killed their parents in self-defense, believing their allegedly abusive parents would kill them to prevent the abuse from being publicly revealed.

Prosecutors said they lied about the alleged abuse and killed their parents for a $15 million fortune.

Also, the defense filed a habeas corpus petition in 2023. They sought a review of a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father and a former boy band member who alleged in 2023 that he was raped by Jose Menendez.