Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. The move of Nathan Hochman to thwart an offer for the freedom of Erik and Lyle Menendez ignores the facts of the case and is motivated by political interest, according to the lawyers of the brothers in a new judicial file.
Hochman’s predecessor George Gascón sought not to be in the process of being respecting the brothers in the 1989 puffing rifle murders. Before losing Hochman during the November elections, Gascón asked a judge to cancel the life sentences of Mendendez without the possibility of parole.
He asked to give them 50 years to life. As they were young offenders – 18 and 21 years old – when they killed Jose and Kitty Menendez in their house in Beverly Hills, resentment could make them eligible for parole and cause their freedom after three decades in prison.
Since Hochman took office as a district prosecutor, he opposed the brothers to obtain a new trial, and last month filed a request to cancel the renowned request from Gascón.
Hochman said during the filing of his request that the brothers had lied several times on the crime, even saying that the murders had been led by the mafia. He wondered if their self -defense claims were valid – their “alleged fear that their mother and father kill them on the night of murders”. The brothers argued that they were subject to years of sexual and emotional violence by their parents.
Hochman said the brothers had not demonstrated “complete information and acceptance of their crime” and that the preceding team of the prosecutor ignored important violations in prison.
The lawyers of the brothers, led by Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, paint the action of Hochman as motivated by politics, and not legal reasoning, as required by case law.
“The question here is whether the file shows that the decision to withdraw the request for the merger of the procedure was based on” legitimate reasons “, they write,” or instead: “a change of political winds”.
They underline the reallowing by Hochman of two prosecutors, Nancy Theberge and Brock Lunsford, who worked with Gascón on the Menendez request and recommended the release of the brothers. Hochman appointed a private lawyer, Kathy Cady, head of the DA victims’ services unit. Cady represented the only parent of Menendez who expressed his opposition to resentment for the brothers. His client, Milton Anderson, was Kitty Menendez’s brother and has since died.
Defense lawyers say Hochman is trying to rewrite history.
“The request for withdrawal contains serious factual and legal errors”, write lawyers, “and it” ignores the constant taking of responsibility and expressions of remorse of Erik and Lyle for decades in prison “.
Hochman notes the defense team, “continued to focus on lies (the brothers) following the crime, and even during the 1993 and 1996 trials”. Defense recognizes that the couple “lied and they tried to make evidence”, but in the three decades that followed, they were on crime.
In 1989, the Menendez brothers bought a pair of hunting rifles with money, entered their Beverly Hills manor and shot their parents while watching a film in the family living room. Jose Menendez was struck five times, and Kitty Menendez crawled through the ground, injured, before the brothers recharged and draw a deadly explosion. Prosecutors during the trials argued that the murders were motivated by a heritage of several million dollars, while the defense argued that it was a form of self -defense after years of sexual abuse by their father.
Hochman’s request to withdraw the renowned request maintains that Erik, now 54 years old, and Lyle, 57, “present an unreasonable risk of danger for the community”, say their lawyers, but “does not refer to them having obtained the lowest risk assessment scores”. They also say that the violations of the rules that the DA has referenced are mean and were made during the decades of prison.
Hochman quoted Governor Governor’s decision to refuse the conditional liberation of Sirhan Sirhan in the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, saying that the lack of insight with the Menendez brothers on their crime is comparable to that of the RFK killer.
But Geragos and the brothers’ legal team say that Sirhan has, over the years, has passed his guilt and, in prison, insisted that he was innocent. The Menendez, however, have held their crime since their conviction, say their lawyers, quoting a quote during the interview with Barbara Walters in 1996: “What we did was horrible, and I hope that we can go back.”
The brothers’ lawyers noted on several occasions that thirty family members supported their release and said that Hochman had misunderstood what the two trials of Erik and Lyle Menendez were, arguing that “the prosecution and the defense recognized that the question of sexual abuse was the centerpiece of the whole case”.
Resentment is only one of the three roads that the brothers seek freedom. They continue a new trial, citing new evidence: a letter written to a cousin by one of them before the murders who detailed abuses, and an allegation of another man – a former member of Boy Band Menodo – that he was sexually abused by Jose Menendez.
They also continue Clémence with Newsom, who ordered the State’s conditional liberation board to launch a risk assessment to find out if the Menendez brothers would present an unreasonable risk for the public if they were released. This would be a first step in their leniency offer.
If the brothers were to receive a leniency and finally have a parole hearing, said Hochman, he would oppose their release.
California Daily Newspapers
