LA DA won't resentence Menendez brothers unless they admit 'lies'

David Matthews, New York Daily News on Mar 20, 2025

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Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman reiterated this week that he won’t honor his predecessor’s request to resentence the Menendez brothers unless they admit their “lies.”

In an interview with ABC News, Hochman said he’d only be willing to recommend resentencing if Lyle and Erik Menendez “sincerely and unequivocally admit for the first time in over 30 years, the full range of their criminal activity and all the lies that they have told about it,” referring to the brothers’ claims of self-defense in the murders of their parents.

Last week, Hochman withdrew former DA George Gascón’s previous recommendation that the brother’s be resentenced and made immediately eligible for parole.

Hochman added he had a “checklist” of “lies” the brothers would need to account for.

“The essence of that checklist is that they’d have to finally admit after 30 years, they killed their parents willfully, deliberately and in premeditated fashion, not because they believed that their parents were going to kill them that night,” Hochman said.

The brothers are both serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 1989 shotgun slayings of Jose and Kitty Menendez at the family’s mansion in Beverly Hills. The brothers have claimed their father sexually abused them for years and that they feared their parents would kill them before they could expose their misdeeds.

In late October, Gascón announced that he was officially recommending the brothers be resentenced after reviewing new evidence of their sexual abuse claims. However, Gascón lost his reelection campaign to Hochman less than two weeks later, giving way for the new DA to make his own determination in the case.

Several Menendez family members held a rally outside Hochman’s office Thursday.

“We will not let him erase their abuse, we will not let him ignore the transformation, and we will not let him silence this family,” said their cousin Anamaria Baralt.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is currently weighing a separate clemency request from the brothers that will have a hearing in June.