Clemency hearing date for Menendez brothers set by California Gov. Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has set a hearing date for Lyle and Eric Menendez that will determine whether a consider clemency application goes forward for the brothers serving life sentences for the 1989 shotgun killing of their parents.
The hearing scheduled for June 13 before the parole board will not interfere or alter an independent investigation but rather determine the recommendation on the clemency application, according to the governor.
"So, on June 13 we will have the parole hearing board recommendation as it relates to the risk assessment (and) as it relates to the forensic psychologist," Newsom said on a Tuesday episode of his podcast. "And that recommendation, that assessment, that independent analysis will help guide the decision making that my office is independently reviewing as it relates to the clemency application."
Newsom said the recommendation will either side with former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón who supported a resentencing, or current District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman who opposes it.
At a Monday news conference, Hochman asked the court to withdraw Gascón's motion to resentence the brothers, adding that "our position is that they shouldn't get out of jail now."
Hochman said his office has laid out a path that would potentially allow them to spend the rest of their lives beyond the walls of a prison requiring the brothers to "finally, after 30 plus years, fully acknowledge and completely accept responsibility for the entire breadth of the crimes and all the lies that they have told, including their defense at trial of self defense."
When do the Menendez brothers get out of prison?
Lyle and Eric Menendez are currently serving a life in prison sentence after both being convicted of first-degree murder in 1996.
The brothers are expected to return to court in separate hearings on June 13, where a parole board will make a recommendation on whether a clemency petition moves forward.
Under California law, if they were resentenced per Gascón's recommendation, they would be eligible for youth parole since they were under the age of 26 at the time of the crime and have already served 30 years in prison.
A parole board would then evaluate whether they have been rehabilitated and are safe to reenter society. Newsom would then have the final say, since California allows the governor to accept, modify or reverse the board’s decision.
Has Newsom seen the Menendez brothers' Netflix show?
Newsom said he has not seen any adaptive content relating to the Menendez brothers, including the popular Netflix dramatized scripted series created by Ryan Murphy premiered last fall.
Though he's seen some clips appear on social media, Newsom said he has intentionally avoided watching any documentaries or scripted content on the case.
"I don't intend to watch these series because I don't want to be influenced by them. I just want to be influenced by the facts," he said on his podcast. "I'm obviously familiar with the Menendez brothers, just through the news over the course of many decades, but not to the degree that many others are because of all of these documentaries and all of the attention they've received. So that won't bias my objective review of the facts."
What did the Menendez brothers do?
The Menendez brothers were convicted in 1996 of killing their father, wealthy music industry executive Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty Menendez, in a retrial after their first murder trials ended with two hung juries. Defense lawyers initially argued Lyle, then 21, and Erik, then 18, had been physically and sexually abused, feared their parents might kill them to stop them from exposing the abuse and fatally shot them in self-defense.
During the second trial, a judge excluded substantial evidence of the alleged abuse, their attorneys and family members contend. Prosecutors argued the brothers fabricated the abuse and killed their parents to obtain their estimated $15 million fortune, claims fueled by a lavish spending spree the pair went on after the murders.
Why the LA District Attorney does not support Menendez resentencing
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman compared the risk assessment of granting the Menendez brothers parole to that of another high profile convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, and was denied parole for a 16th time in 2023. Hochman said that like Sirhan, the Menendez brothers had risk assessment levels of 19, the lowest an inmate can have in the California prison system.
He acknowledged, as family members have touted, that the brothers have participated in prison programs, gained an education, committed few rule violations and have letters of support from living relatives of the victims who want to see them released. But Hochman said the key issue in both cases was the lack of "full insight into their crimes and completely accepting responsibility for their actions."
Hochman said that in the more than 80 page filing his team laid out over a dozen lies the men told and actions they took in the wake of their parents' murder, including blaming the killings on the mafia and trying to coerce friends into corroborating their story. He said that while they have admitted to some of these lies, the men continue to maintain that they killed their parents because they were afraid for their lives, a defense Hochman called "fabricated."
"They persist in these lies to this very day. So like with Sirhan Sirhan not being able to exhibit full insight into his actions, so too the Menendez brothers failed to exhibit full insight into their actions," he said.
Could Newsom just grant them clemency?
As governor, Newsom has the power to grant clemency on his own. The brothers' attorneys filed a clemency request with his office, and late last month he ordered the state's parole board to investigate whether the men pose an "unreasonable" public safety risk if they are released from prison.
Hochman said Monday that assessment could take up to 90 days and the court may want to see that report before it holds the resentencing hearing.
Contributing: Karissa Waddick, Terry Collins, Christopher Cann, Jorge L. Ortiz, and John Bacon, Paste BN