EXCLUSIVE: The Los Angeles County District Attorney doesn’t think the Menendez Brothers should be let out of prison and Nathan Hochman really doesn’t think their much-delayed resentencing hearing should go ahead as planned on Thursday.
After coming up short last week in front of LA Superior Court Judge Micheal Jesic in scuttling a potential reassessment of Erik Menendez and Lyle Menendez’s cases, the DA’s office has now made a brazen political move to force the hands of the courts and Governor Gavin Newsom.
Hochman’s team has just filed a conditional motion to push back tomorrow’s pivotal hearing in this once again high-profile case until Judge Jesic can get his mitts on the supposedly completed risk assessment report the Governor ordered the parole board on March 4 to work on as a part of a clemency petition for the siblings.
That report Newsom wants from the parole board will be part of the material illuminating a June 13 hearing the brothers will individually have before the board. Out of that June hearing, Newsom will make his decision to grant clemency or not. Today’s move by the DA’s office could serve to both speed that process up and kick the whole thing down the road simultaneously.
Pushed back several times due to an incumbent being tossed out of office, wildfires and more, the resentencing hearing that could see the life without parole punishment the brothers received in the 1990s for the brutal 1989 shotgun murder of their parents overturned was most recently on the calendar for April 17-18. If the Judge agreed to reexamine the sentence the Menendezs have, the whole matter would then go to the parole board – which is where it is anyway – and then to Newsom.
Which conveniently for the ambitious Hochman, dumps the whole matter on the term limited Governor. Heading into Thursday’s likely harsh hearing(s) for the DA’s office, look what very conveniently turned up
“On April 15, 2025, the People were made aware that the Parole Board has completed its Comprehensive Risk Assessment Reports for Erik and Lyle Menendez,” the filing Wednesday from the DA’s office declares. “Although the People were directed not to disclose these reports due to the Governor’s Executive privilege and for other reasons, the Governor’s Office has invited the Court to request these documents for use at the resentencing hearing,” they go on to say.
Hitching their wagon to an early 8:30 am PT hearing on Thursday that Menendez family members have sought to get a court admonishment of Hochman, the DA’s office adds: The People request the Court make all reasonable efforts to obtain the recently completed Comprehensive Risk Assessments from the Governor’s Office. If additional time is required to obtain these documents, the People ask the Court to continue the resentencing hearing.”
The decades old Menendez case became a shiv of sorts in Golden State realpolitik since now former DA George Gascón took notice of the huge reaction the Netflix and Ryan Murphy series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story received last fall and suddenly dusted off the matter in the middle of his ultimately unsuccessful reelection campaign. Called out for opportunism by Hochman during the race, Gascón eventually recommended resentencing for the brothers. That motion as well as any notion of a fast-tracked clemency from the media savvy Newsom, hit the brakes late last year with Hochman’s election as the new DA sought time to settle in and read through the files himself.
Promising “that whatever decision is ultimately made is the best-informed decision possible” to Deadline in December, Hochman came to the conclusion early this year the brothers continue to weave “a continuum of lies and deceit and fabricating stories.” On February 21 he said he did not believe the Menendezs should have a new trial and on March 10 the D.A. went before the cameras again to tell the world he was withdrawing the resentencing motion of his predecessor.
Last week saw that unsuccessful presentation to jettison the whole resentencing proceedings before Judge Jesic by Deputy DA Habib Balian. What also came out of that April 11 session was outrage and legal action from some of the Menendez family over unexpectedly utilized crime scene photos of the mutilated and murdered body of José Menendez. Though made public before, the 1989 shooting images shocked the relatives, as well as the virtually attending siblings. The family said that the whole thing caused the April 13 hospitalization of 85-year-old Terry Baralt, sister to the brothers’ record executive father, who has been accused of relentlessly sexually abusing them and others when he was alive.
First the family advocated the DA’s office be removed from the case because of its insensitivity and possible violation of the Victim’s Bill of Rights, or Marsy’s Law. Then on April 14, they filed paperwork in the LASC docket seeking a formal admonishment of the DA’s office for their “scandalous behavior” showing those “horrific and gruesome photographs of the 1989 deaths of their relatives.”
With the resentencing hearing set for around 9:30 am PT on April 17, the family sought an 8:30 am PT hearing to deal with the misconduct allegations. A hearing the DA’s office is clearly high jacking now.
In fact, with no mention of their own new filing, Hochman’s office took to social media this evening to push their POV on Thursday’s hearings, along with a slick month old video
Perhaps more disdainfully, the DA’s office is claiming tonight they were broadsided on Tuesday by news of the completed parole board report and are getting the runaround.
“I was further informed that the Comprehensive Risk Assessments and clemency hearing are part of the Governor’s statutorily-authorized clemency investigation process and are protected under the executive privilege as well as the deliberative process privilege,” says Deputy DA Balian in a declaration today accompanying the motion for possible continence. “I was also informed that there are other reasons the People could not disclose the reports, including the fact that they may contain sensitive and protected information. In sum, the People were directed to maintain the confidentiality of the reports.”
“On the same day, April 15, 2025, I was also notified by court personnel that the Court was informed by the Governor’s Office that the Comprehensive Risk Assessments were completed and that the Court could request access to the documents so that the Court could potentially have the risk assessments for its evaluation at the upcoming resentencing hearings,” he further says. Detailing some “potentially conflicting information from the Court,” Balian goes on to say: “Additionally, the Governor’s office also informed me that it had informed the Court that, although the Board’s final risk assessment conclusions will not be ready to share until the June 13th hearings, the Court could request the Governor to ask the Board to make the reports available to the Court for its review prior to the resentencing hearing.”
Menendez family lawyers Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on this latest filing by DA Hochman’s office, but they can’t be pleased.
Thursday’s resentencing hearing was already locked down tighter than most jailhouses because of the massive public interest in the Menendez case. Whatever comes out of tomorrow’s early morning session and if the DA;s office gets the continuance they want or not, there are going to be a lot of very raw emotions and more filings to come.
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