December 3 can’t come soon enough got the Menendez Brothers.
The first week after Thanksgiving finds new Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman taking office. As the former U.S. Assistant Attorney General made clear in his successful campaign against one-term incumbent George Gascón and since his November 5 landslide victory, one of the first things the new DA will be treating as a self-declared “high priority” is the move his predecessor began on October 24 on resentencing the long incarcerated siblings.
“Once I take office on December 3, I look forward to putting in the hard work to thoroughly review the facts and law of the Menendez case, including reviewing the confidential prison files, the transcripts of the two trials and the voluminous exhibits, as well as speaking with the prosecutors, defense attorneys and victim family members,” Hochman said today.
With a December 11 resentencing hearing currently on the calendar, Hochman hasn’t given away where he stands on the high profile case. However, after the late October one-two punch of clemency requests from the Menendezs to Gavin Newsom and “strong support” letters from the then-poll challenged Gascón, the California Governor has hit pause — at least for the time being.
“The governor respects the role of the district attorney in ensuring justice is served and recognizes that voters have entrusted District Attorney-elect Hochman to carry out this responsibility,” Newsom’s office exclaimed on Monday in a statement that threw cold water on the hopes of the Menendez brothers, a legion of their family and other supporters, including Gascón.
“The governor will defer to the D.A.-elect’s review and analysis of the Menendez case prior to making any clemency decisions.”
Which is to say, Newsom isn’t going to do Gascón any favors as the former San Francisco DA exits his LA job a few days after Turkey Day.
If Hochman decides the December 11 resentencing hearing will go ahead as scheduled, LA Superior Court Judge William Ryan could shift the brothers penalty to manslaughter instead of first-degree murder, and they could walk out of prison soon if a parole board agrees. Then again, if both Hochman and Newsom did nothing to obstruct or encourage the matter, Judge Ryan could also order a brand new trial for the Menendez brothers
A media sensation back in Bill Clinton’s first term, the brothers’ case has come back into the headlines in no small part because of new evidence of sexual abuse by the boys music executive father revealed in Peacock’s 2023 docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed and more recently Ryan Murphy’s true nine-part crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which launched on Netflix on September 19. Those shows were followed by a Menendez docu on the Ted Sarando and Greg Peters-run streamer and advocacy for the brothers from the likes of Kim Kardashian and a number of the killers’ family members.
Almost three decades after the brothers were sentencing to life without parole in their second trial in 1996 for the brutal shotgun murder of their parents in 1989, the DA-to-be also hasn’t declared whether or not he will seek a pause on any further steps towards potentially seeing the 54-year-old Erik Menendez and 56-year-old Lyle Menendez freed from the state prison near San Diego that presently holds them.
It is unlikely Gascón will play much more of a role in the case in his final days. Right now, the only milestone in the case under his remaining watch is a November 25 status hearing out at the Van Nuys Courthouse West. A hearing that right now, very much has an air of “hurry up and wait” about it.
