The Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik, will finally get their day in court, after a judge scheduled a resentencing hearing to determine whether they would be eligible for release after being convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents.
After several delays, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael V. Jesic on Friday, in the Van Nuys, CA, courthouse, scheduled a hearing for next week to decide whether the brothers should be resentenced to life with the possibility of parole, making them eligible for parole immediately after more than three decades behind bars.
Newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman on Friday tried to have the resentencing petition removed, but Jesic rejected it and set the hearing dates for May 13 and May 14. The petition was previously filed by the former L.A. D.A. George Gascon, who lost in November’s election to Hochman.
Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom set to reach a courtroom next week https://t.co/MP5eqY8IKz
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 9, 2025
The Menendez brothers’ attorneys filed an earlier motion to disqualify Hochman due to his stance on the brothers, but Friday, Jesic also denied that motion, before one of the attorneys, Mark Geragos, withdrew the motion to have Hochman recused from the case.
Geragos told the outlet that he “did not want to waste any more time” and further hold up the process.
Hochman previously made it clear that he doesn’t think the brothers have “come clean with … information” after all these decades on “why they brutally killed their parents.”
The Menendez brothers’ trial was nationally televised in 1990 and drew the attention of the nation as it involved two sons of a wealthy family, then 18 and 21, who murdered their parents, José Menendez and Kitty Menendez, with a shotgun.
During the trial, the brothers alleged they were sexually abused by their father, and said their mother knew and didn’t stop it, the NY Times noted in the story linked above.
The two alleged they had no choice, because the parents otherwise would murder them to bury the secrets of the abuse.
In 2024, Netflix released a series by Ryan Murphy titled “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and a documentary, drawing attention to their case to a new generation.
In October, Gascon said that after much consideration, he had decided that resentencing for the Mendez brothers was appropriate, as my RedState colleague Becca Lower reported.
He began by saying that there were vastly differing views within the DA’s office on the Menendez case, saying “this is a case where we’ve had many people in this office spend a great deal of time review of the case [sic].”
Gascón continued, “I have to tell you that unequivocally, we don’t have a universal agreement. There are people in the office that strongly believe that the Menendez brothers should stay in prison the rest of their lives, and they do not believe that they were molested. And there are people in the office who believe that they should be released immediately, and that they were in fact molested.”
Then-DA Gascon said his office would recommend to the court that “life without the possibility of parole be removed,” and “that they would be sentenced for murder which, because there were two murders involved, that would be 50 years to life. However, because of their age….since they were under 26 years of age at the time that these crimes occurred, they would be eligible for parole immediately.”
As this is a developing story, RedState will provide updates as warranted.
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