Los Angeles County’s top prosecutor said he had withdrawn a recommendation to reduce the prison terms of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are serving sentences of life without parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
In a reversal of his predecessor, District Attorney Nathan Hochman said there were “legitimate reasons and the interests of justice justifies that withdrawal.”
Hochman said the Menendez brothers, who have served 35 years in prison, have not fully acknowledged more than a dozen lies, including that they killed their parents in self-defense at their Beverly Hills home.
“In looking at whether the Menendez brothers have exhibited full insight and complete responsibility for their crimes, they have not,” he said during a press conference.
“They don’t meet the standards for resentencing,” Hochman continued.
The district attorney called the murders of their parents a Mafia-style killing.
He said the brothers have been “justifying the brutal murders of their parents with shotgun blasts through the back of their father’s head, a point-blank blast through their mother’s face, and shots to their kneecaps to stage it as a Mafia killing.”
Hochman went on to say that the brothers “never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense.”
Family members of the brothers slammed Hochman’s statements.
“He appears fixated on their trauma-driven response to the killings in 1989 with blinders on to the fact they were repeatedly abused,” a statement from the family-led Justice for Erik and Lyle Coalition reads.
The brothers claimed their father abused them and they responded in self-defense by killing him and their mother.
GAVIN NEWSOM BEGINS ‘DETERMINATION OF CLEMENCY’ FOR MENENDEZ BROTHERS
The former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón had endorsed resentencing, reducing their sentences, and making them immediately eligible for parole.
The resentencing hearing for the Menendez brothers is scheduled for a two-day hearing on March 20 and 21 before the Los Angeles County Superior Court.