The Los Angeles County District Attorney has asked the court to withdraw the resentencing motion for Lyle and Erik Menendez, stating that their self-defense claims for murdering their parents are a litany of “lies.”
“We are prepared to go forward” with the hearing about their resentencing case, Nathan Hochman announced at a news conference on Monday.
“However, we are asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney’s motion for resentencing, because we believe there are legitimate reasons and the interests of justice justifies that withdrawal,” he said.
Hochman’s request is “based on the current state of the record and the Menendez brothers’ current and continual failure to show full insight and accept full responsibility for their murders,” ABC News reported.
The DA explained that circumstances would have been different if the Menendez brothers were more forthright about what happened in August 1989 when they killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Since the incident, both Lyle and Erik Menendez, now aged 57 and 54 respectively, are each serving two life sentences without parole.
“If they were to finally come forward and unequivocally and sincerely admit and completely accept responsibility for their lies of self-defense and the attempted suborning of perjury they engaged in, then the Court should weigh such new insight into the analysis of rehabilitation and resentencing—as will the People,” Hochman said.
He claimed that his decision is based on a number of factors, such as reviewing the transcripts from both trials, prison records and videotaped trial testimony. He also met with Menendez family members, defense attorneys and past prosecutors.
Emphasizing the careful planning that went into the murders, Hochman noted the degree of premeditation on part of Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18 despite their defense that they had no choice but to kill their parents.
Indeed, the brothers drove to San Diego days prior to the incident to buy guns with a fake ID and planned their alibi by buying movie tickets on the night of the murders.
Not just that. After they killed their parents, the brothers allegedly shot them in the kneecaps to make it seem like a gang shooting, Hochman argued.
They “also had the presence of mind to pick up all the shotgun shells,” hide their fingerprints and then thought as far ahead as to ditch their bloody clothes and the weapons.
All in all, the Los Angeles DA claimed that the brothers have changed their stories multiple times and in doing so have told 20 lies while admitting to only four—leaving 16 lies “unacknowledged.”
Pointing out that the brothers initially tried to make the crime seem like a Mafia hit, and that the truth only came out when Erik Menendez confessed to his therapist, Hochman added: “They convinced, not just the media, not just the police, but their family and their friends that they were 100 percent innocent of these crimes, until eventually these tapes came out.”
The story’s first iteration changed when Lyle Menendez allegedly tried to get his girlfriend to claim that his father had drugged and raped her. Later, Erik Menendez insisted that he was raped by their father and Lyle Menendez by their mother, Hochman said.
The resentencing hearing is set for March 20 and 21.
The resentencing motion is largely irrelevant however because if a judge approves it then it would still have to go before the parole board, which is already evaluating the case at the behest of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
If the parole board deems that the Menendez brothers are not a danger to society then it will be up to Newsom to decide if they are released from prison.
