Eric and Lyle Menendez appeared by video in a California courtroom Friday and scored a legal victory when a judge said their resentencing hearing will move forward as planned next week, despite fierce opposition from Los Angeles County’s recently elected district attorney, Nathan Hochman.
At a lengthy court hearing in Van Nuys, Judge Michael Jesic ruled that Hochman’s decision last month to pull back on his predecessor’s support for resentencing lacked a sufficient basis. After Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian argued that the brothers were still “hunkered down in their bunker of deception,” the judge said it wasn’t enough to revoke the court’s jurisdiction over the mater.
“There’s no new information. You presented all this argument [but] none of this is really new. They’ve stuck with their story since the beginning. None of this shocked me,” Judge Jesic said. “My decision is to deny the motion to withdraw. We’re going to move forward.”
Erik and Lyle did not address the court and looked straight ahead with serious expressions during most of the hearing. They were seated next to each other in front of a white cinderblock wall wearing matching blue shirts. When they heard the resentencing hearing would move ahead, Lyle nodded in the affirmative and Erik appeared to smile.
The judge made his ruling shortly after watching a defense video in which Diane VanderMolen, one of the brothers’ cousins, recalled staying at the Menendez home one summer when she was 16. She said an 8-year-old Lyle came into her room and said he was afraid to sleep alone because his father would come in and touch his genitals. VanderMolen also testified about the incident during the brothers’ first trial. She was seated in the courtroom Friday along with more than a dozen other relatives supporting Erik and Lyle’s release.
“Wow, that really got me. I didn’t know they were going to play that. I got really emotional,” VanderMolen told Rolling Stone after the hearing. “I’m so overjoyed with the judge’s decision. This really is all about rehabilitation. I cannot imagine two better examples of people who deserve release. The programs for other inmates and the counseling they’ve done, it’s amazing.”
Hochman’s predecessor, George Gascón, set the stage for possible resentencing and release when he made the bombshell announcement last October that he believed the brothers had paid their “debt” to society and should be given new sentences of 50 years to life. Erik and Lyle previously were sentenced to life without parole for killing parents José and Kitty Menendez inside the family’s Beverly Hills mansion. If granted the sentence previously sought by Gascón, the brothers would be eligible for immediate parole.
During the full-day hearing on Friday, Balian argued that Gascón’s administration sought resentencing as a political stunt last October when he was 30 points down in the polls during his reelection bid against Hochman. Mark Geragos, the brothers’ lead defense lawyer, countered that Hochman was the one playing politics. He claimed that once Hochman was sworn into office last December, he quickly “banished” the two deputy district attorneys who authored Gascón’s resentencing motion and appointed Kathleen Cady — the private attorney who represented the brothers’ lone relative opposed to resentencing — as head of the DA’s Department of Victim Services. Geragos said Hochman then tried to pass the buck by holding a press conference where he essentially sent a “message” to California Gov. Gavin Newsom to “take this off my plate. I’m going to be the Nineties-ass Neanderthal.” (Newsom is weighing a separate clemency request from the brothers and has scheduled parole board hearings for June 13. Judge Jesic’s ruling Friday does not affect the clemency effort.)
Geragos called Balian’s two hours of argument Friday a “dog and pony show” from a “DA elected as a throwback to the Nineties.” The tense hearing reached a boiling point shortly after Balian flashed a photo on the courtroom screen showing José and Kitty’s dead bodies inside the den where they were killed. José was seated lifeless on a couch with his knee blown off. Kitty was on the floor beside him, covered in blood.
“I think it’s outrageous, with the victims’ family populating this courtroom, that he flashed up a photo of the crime scene without any warning. He has no consideration whatsoever for the victims. I object on their behalf. They’re being retraumatized by the DA for political purposes,” Geragos stood up and protested.
“They’re horrible photos, and I apologize,” Balian said. But he didn’t back down. “These two caused it,” he said, referring to Erik and Lyle. He called the photo “important” evidence of the brothers’ “carnage.”
When the photo appeared on the screen, Sylvia Bolock, a niece of José Menendez, shut her eyes tight. Other relatives looked aghast. The courtroom was packed, with actor Cooper Koch, who played Erik in Ryan Murphy’s 2024 Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, seated in the back row.
For most of his presentation, with Hochman watching from the courtroom gallery, Balian argued the brothers aren’t rehabilitated because they’ve yet to take full accountability for “the severity and depravity of their conduct.” He said regret was not the same as “responsibility.”
“Have they expressed regret? Absolutely. It can’t be easy to look down the barrel of a shotgun at your parents and pull the trigger. I’m sure they regret that,” Balian said. “I’m sure Lyle regrets re-loading and pressing the barrel into his mom’s cheek. He pressed it into her flesh and released a hail of buckshot through her face.” Balian accused the brothers of still trying to “minimize” what they did. He claimed they’ve never owned up to writing “scripts” for witnesses to lie on their behalf. He pointed out that Lyle’s ex-girlfriend testified that she refused to go along with his request that she accuse José of drugging and raping her. “They have not changed in the way they need to change,” Balian argued.
But defense lawyer Alexandra Kazarian played yet another video that was a montage of Erik and Lyle speaking with news reporters after their convictions. In one clip, Erik said, “what we did was awful.” In another clip, Lyle said he had tremendous remorse.
“It’s just not true they have no insight or remorse,” Kazarian argued. She said the prosecution “has made up” the narrative they won’t take responsibility. Geragos, meanwhile, said the whole point of California’s resentencing law is to offer “hope” and a “carrot” to people incarcerated for crimes, so they have incentive to do the “hard work” to rehabilitate and not become every warden’s worst nightmare. He said Erik and Lyle have become “remarkable human beings” behind bars, working on programs to teach meditation to other inmates, train guide dogs, paint murals, and create green spaces.
Judge Jesic said the resentencing hearing set for next Thursday and Friday will give both prosecutors and the defense a chance to present their “phenomenal” arguments about whether the brothers deserve resentencing. He said his ruling Friday was not on the merits of the resentencing effort, just a reflection of his view the court should let the matter proceed.
“Justice won over politics,” Geragos told reporters after the hearing. He was surrounded by Menendez family members who traded information about the flights they had to catch to get back home. Many have attended multiple hearings or meetings with prosecutors since October.
At a hearing and in Jesic’s courtroom last November, Kitty’s 92-year-old sister Joan Andersen VanderMolen testified that she believes the brothers were molested by their father. “No child should have to endure what Erik and Lyle lived through at the hands of their father. It breaks my heart that my sister Kitty knew what was happening and did nothing about it, that we knew of,” she said under questioning by Geragos. “They never knew if tonight would be the night when they would be raped. … It’s time for them to come home. No child should have to live day by day [wondering] if that night, their dad would come and rape them.”
José’s older sister, Teresita Baralt, 85, also testified in November. She said she loved her “baby brother” and that Kitty was her “best friend.” Still, through tears, she said “it’s time for [her nephews] to come home.”
“We miss those that are gone, tremendously, but we miss the kids too,” Baralt said on the witness stand in the Van Nuys courtroom. “I would like some leniency to have them back. Thirty-five years, it’s a long time [to be in prison]. I think they have been rehabilitated. They have done a lot of good things. They went to college. They could have done a lot of bad things [while incarcerated]. They didn’t.”
Baralt said Lyle lived with her family when he attended Princeton and that Erik was only three months older than her youngest daughter. She said visiting the brothers while they’re housed at a California prison in San Diego is very difficult for her. “I would like to be able to see them and hug them, not in the jail. I want them to come home so I can hug them and see them. They were raised with [my four daughters]. It’s been difficult,” she said.
Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, were young men at the time of the murders — 21 and 18, respectively. Gascón said he considered their ages at the time, as well as their good behavior behind bars, when he recommended re-sentencing.
The brothers were convicted of firing more than a dozen shotgun shells at their parents inside the den of their mansion, including a blast to the back of their dad’s head and the one to their mom’s face. An initial televised trial ended with two hung juries — one for each brother. The brothers claimed during the first trial they were sexually abused by their entertainment-executive father and feared for their lives before opening fire because they’d had a heated confrontation with both parents that night regarding the family’s alleged incest secret. “I thought my dad was going to come up to my room and have sex, and I thought they were going to kill us,” Erik testified at the first trial. Prosecutors told jurors the brothers were lying and had conspired to kill their parents with shotguns purchased two days earlier in San Diego using false identification. They said the brothers were greedy and wanted access to their parents’ considerable wealth through early inheritance.
At a second trial, the judge declined to allow cameras and ruled the brothers would share a single jury. He also limited the number of defense witnesses who could testify about the alleged abuse. On March 20, 1996, the jury on the second trial convicted Lyle and Erik of the first-degree murders of both parents with the special circumstance of lying in wait. It also found them guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. After a subsequent penalty phase, the jury spared the brothers the death penalty.
After the convictions, journalist Robert Rand obtained a letter that Erik allegedly wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the murders, when he was 17. In the letter excerpted in a subsequent habeas petition, Erik described being abused by his father and how fearful he was. “It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now,” Erik wrote. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in. … He’s warned me a 100 times about telling anyone.” (Andy Cano is now deceased.)
In his 2023 Peacock docuseries, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Rand also detailed new allegations from Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. In the documentary, Rossello claimed that José had sexually abused him, too.
Speaking in court Friday, Geragos said he planned to call Rossello as a witness next week.
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