The lawyer for celebrity killers Erik and Lyle Menendez said the Los Angeles district attorney has a personal vendetta against the pair and wants him kicked off their case in an explosive courtroom hearing that left freedom for the brothers undecided.
On Thursday an LA County judge postponed the brothers’ already much-delayed resentencing hearing, which will determine whether they walk free more than 30 years after shotgunning their wealthy parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989.
The judge agreed to weigh two new motions before making the final call on Lyle and Erik’s fate.
One motion asks the court to consider a new report by the state parole board about how dangerous the brothers are, and another asks the court to recuse the District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who the brothers’ lawyer said is biased against the pair, allowing the state attorney general to take over the case.
The hearing on those two motions is scheduled for May 9th.
The Menendez’s lawyer Mark Garagos and a deputy for District Attorney Nathan Hochman duked it out in the courtroom, trading interruptions and insults before the judge finally called a recess.
“He keeps degrading us and degrading us!” Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian said after Garagos trashed the prosecution for “retraumatizing” family members by showing grizzly crime scene photos in court.
“You should be degraded!” Garagos shot back.
The gory photos of José and Kitty’s corpses were sprung on their unsuspecting family members at a hearing last week, and the shock of seeing them put José’s 85-year-old sister in the hospital earlier this week, the family said.
Garagos said the photos were one of many “media stunts” and “dog and pony show” tactics that call DA Hochman’s intentions into question.
One of those alleged tactics involved an attempt to postpone the hearing to give the court the opportunity to review a new “risk assessment” from the state parole board.
The assessment was conducted as part of a simultaneous ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom, who may choose to grant them clemency even if the local court rules to keep them locked up.
That assessment has not been released to the public, but DA Hochman seemed to imply it will show a lack of remorse — or “insight” — by the brothers.
“If you have minimized your criminal conduct … you do not exhibit ‘insight’ into it, and if you do not exhibit insight into it, then you are not rehabilitated,” the DA told reporters outside the courthouse Thursday morning.
“We just want every part of the factual picture to be before the judge when he makes his decision,” Hochman added.
That afternoon, after the chaotic hearing, Garagos blasted Hochman’s press conference as a stunt that used confidential information to sway the public.
“Based on the analyses we have done … this is as righteous a recusal motion of the DA as I have ever had,” Garagos told reporters outside the courthouse.
“It’s become a mockery … Is [Hochman] personally invested in this? Does he have a personal grudge against Lyle and Erik?” said Bryan Freedman, the lawyer for the more than a dozen family members who have agreed to testify on behalf of Erik and Lyle.
Garagos is seeking for Lyle and Erik’s charges to be reduced to manslaughter from the first-degree murder rap they were handed after two high-profile trials in the 90s.
A manslaughter sentence would allow them to immediately walk free for time served.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were 21 and 18, respectively, when they purchased shotguns and executed Kitty and José — a wealthy music producer — in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion. They later claimed their father had sexually abused them as children and that they feared both parents would kill them to hide the truth.
A 2024 Netflix dicumentary brought the pair back into the national eye, and newly surfaced evidence, — inclduing a letter from Erik dated before the murders describing the abuse — seemed to sway previous DA George Gascón to their cause.
However, Nathan Hochman has personally dismissed their story and his office has done everything in its power to keep the brothers locked up.
But the DA’s zeal could work against him if the judge agrees to boot him from the case next month.
