The Menendez brothers will still get their day in court, but the long incarcerated siblings will have to wait until next month to see if they will be resentenced or not for the 1989 shotgun murder of their parents.
Judge Michael Jesic initially decided this morning to go forward with the two-day scheduled resentencing session this morning and cast aside an 11th hour motion of continuance from the LA County District Attorney’s office over a risk assessment report ordered earlier this year by Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, after some fireworks between Nathan Hochman’s office and defense attorneys in and outside the Van Nuys courthouse, the LA Superior Court judge has pushed back any resentencing hearing until May 9.
Prosecutors for the DA’s office and the defense’s Mark Geragos- and Bryan Freedman are still conferring with Judge Jesic, but this is over for now. Originally, even though Judge Jesic said he would not have a decision this week, the resentencing was supposed to run today and April 18.
This new delay in the much delayed resentencing comes after a two-hour break that ended at 1:30 pm PT as prosecutors, the defense and Judge Jesic bartered and petitioned the governor’s office for the full report and waiving of privilege to see it. Weighing a potential clemency for the 1996 life without parole sentenced Erik and Lyle Menendez, Newsom in late February ordered the assessment as part of an overall reexamination of the case and the siblings’ rehabilitation.
That reexamination will culminate in individual hearings for each brother before the parole board on June 13. The day is important because that is why the report was shared with Deputy DA Habib Balian, who is overseeing the resentencing and the parole aspects of the case for Hochman. Under California regulations, a portion of the risk assessment report, which is subject to correction and updating. is to be handed over to the principal parties for their review 60 days before any clemency hearing, and is subject to correction — that is why Balian got it earlier this week.
Out of that June hearing, and the political winds of the Golden State, Newsom would make his decision to grant clemency or not. Elected in a landslide last year against George Gascón, who started the resentencing process the current DA is seeking to blunt, Hochman today reiterated his contention that the brothers have after all these decades not “come clean with ..information” on “why they brutally killed their parents.”
Back in the media and public spotlight in no small part due to the success of the Netflix and Ryan Murphy series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story series and some documentaries claiming new evidence, the Menendez brothers now insist the shooting of José Menendez and Kitty Menendez was self-defense against the ongoing sexual abuse by their record company executive father.
