California Attorney General Rob Bonta says the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office should remain involved with the Erik and Lyle Menendez case despite their lawyer’s effort to bar the DA from resentencing hearings.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic will hold a hearing Friday to consider defense attorney Mark Geragos’ motion to recuse the entire District Attorney’s Office, which opposes resentencing for the brothers convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. Erik and Lyle Menendez are serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Resentencing hearings could ultimately result in their release.
In a written comment filed Monday with the court, the Attorney General’s Office urged Jesic to deny defense’s motion to bar the District Attorney’s Office from resentencing hearings. Bonta and his staff said there isn’t sufficient evidence to support Geragos’ contention that the District Attorney’s Office is biased against the Menendez brothers. For example, the office’s decision to transfer two attorneys who previously supported resentencing is not enough to prove the office is biased, said the Attorney General’s Office, which disputed Geragos’ various allegations against the D.A.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who succeeded former District Attorney George Gascón in December, has taken a tougher stance on the Menendez brothers than Gascón, who recommended resentencing in October after the murder case was reviewed by the Resentencing Unit that the district attorney created in 2021.
Gascón said he took in consideration the feelings of the victims’ families.
“For decades, they have navigated the grief of their unimaginable loss,” he explained. “We also acknowledge Erik and Lyle’s continuous rehabilitative efforts during their incarceration.”
But after taking office, Hochman withdrew the District Attorney Office’s support for resentencing.
Gascón didn’t fully consider whether the Menendez brothers had taken responsibility for the murders, Hochman said in April.
He said the brothers have continued to lie as they made “their claims of self-defense, that is, their fear that their mother and father were going to kill them the night of Aug. 20, 1989, justifying the brutal murders of their parents with shotgun blasts through the back of their father’s head, a point-blank blast through their mother’s face and shots to their kneecaps to stage it as a Mafia killing.”
