Erik and Lyle Menendez will have to wait a little longer to see if they may finally walk free.
On Thursday, a Los Angeles judge pushed back a highly awaited resentencing hearing, delaying the proceedings for at least the second time in order to decide whether a key report on the brothers was admissible.
A two-day resentencing hearing was set to begin on Thursday in a packed courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court. Now, a procedural hearing is scheduled for May 9. The court will grapple with the report and other matters before moving on to hear testimony about potential resentencing. The judge said part of the hearing on May 9 could be closed to the public.
At issue: Whether the brothers should walk free more than three decades after they murdered their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion.
The brothers have long said they did so because they were sexually abused by their father and feared that their parents would kill them to prevent the family’s secrets from being disclosed. They were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. A new, lesser sentence could see the brothers freed imminently.
The move on Thursday by the judge, Michael V. Jesic, to push back the resentencing hearing was a momentary victory for the county’s top prosecutor, Nathan J. Hochman, who filed a motion late Wednesday night asking for the delay. Prosecutors had argued that the court should wait until it had secured the report, known as a risk assessment, before going forward with the resentencing hearing.
That risk assessment was ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California as part of clemency proceedings, a legal process separate from the resentencing. Prosecutors said the report, prepared by the state’s parole board, became available this week.
Judge Jesic and the lawyers said there were conflicting messages from the governor’s office about whether the report should be used in the resentencing process. On the one hand, the governor has claimed the report falls under executive privilege and should not be made public; on the other, the governor’s office has invited Judge Jesic to review the report.
Judge Jesic adjourned the hearing for more than two hours at one point Thursday afternoon so he could seek clarity from the governor’s office. “This is stupid,” Judge Jesic said shortly before he left the bench.
When he returned, he said the risk assessment would be made available to him and to the brothers’ lawyers. But he said it was not clear whether the information in the report would be admissible in court. The lawyers on both sides will argue over that issue on May 9.
The judge must also deal with escalating tensions between lawyers for the brothers and Mr. Hochman’s prosecutors.
At a hearing last week, prosecutors, without warning, showed a graphic crime scene photo while the family was in the courtroom. The family subsequently filed a complaint against Mr. Hochman, saying the move had violated a victims’ rights law and had traumatized members of the family. Terry Baralt, the 85-year-old sister of the brothers’ father, was hospitalized as a result, the family has said.
Habib Balian, the lead prosecutor in the case, said that moving forward he would give notice before he showed any crime scene photos, but added that “Erik and Lyle caused that carnage.”
And on Thursday in court, lawyers for the brothers said they planned to file a motion seeking to force the district attorney’s office to recuse itself in the resentencing matter. Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for the Menendez brothers, accused Mr. Hochman of having a “personal bias” in the case. He said that at the time of the 1989 murders, Mr. Hochman lived close to the crime scene and attended the same high school as the brothers.
“His personal bias in this is seething through every action that has been taken,” Mr. Freedman said.
Throughout the proceedings, Mr. Hochman’s team has insisted its work is not politically motivated and has argued that it is necessary to highlight the depravity of the brothers’ crime.
The murders happened on the evening of Aug. 20, 1989, when the brothers burst into the den of the family home with shotguns and repeatedly fired at their parents as the couple watched television and ate ice cream.
In the aftermath of the killings, the brothers told the police they suspected that either the mafia or his business associates had killed their father, and soon went on a spending spree with the family’s money, buying clothes, sports cars and luxury watches.
They were arrested the following spring, and their trial in 1993 became one of the first to be broadcast to a national television audience. That initial trial, in which the brothers were tried together but each with a different jury, ended in a mistrial. They were tried again with no cameras present and strict limits on some of the testimony imposed by the judge.
The brothers were convicted after that second trial.
As their years in prison passed, the story of the Menendez brothers endured in popular culture through numerous scripted series and documentaries. Two high-profile projects recently brought forward by Netflix — a dramatic series by the producer Ryan Murphy and a documentary — lent momentum to fresh legal efforts to have the brothers’ convictions and sentences re-examined.
While the brothers’ claims that they had been sexually abused by their father were, at the time of their trials, downplayed or dismissed by prosecutors and mocked by late-night comics, evidence unearthed in recent years has supported the claims, and has helped attract new backers to the brothers’ cause. Younger supporters have tapped into the evolving cultural attitudes about sexual abuse and the trauma it inflicts, organizing social media campaigns on the brothers’ behalf.
Tim Arango is a correspondent covering national news. He is based in Los Angeles.
Matt Stevens writes about arts and culture news for The Times.
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