Menendez brothers prosecutor asks court to withdraw request for reduced sentences

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Frida announced LA County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic's rejection of a request from the DA's office to withdraw a resentencing motion for Lyle and Erik Menendez filed by former DA George Gascon.

A resentencing hearing will move forward on April 17 and 18.

"Our position remains clear: Until the Menendez brothers finally come clean with all their lies of self-defense and suborning and attempting to suborn perjury, they are not rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety," Hochman said.

The DA said there are two paths for the brothers to get a resentencing hearing: "The Court’s own initiated motion and the prior DA’s motion."

"We have consistently stated that we are prepared to go forward with the Court’s own initiated motion for resentencing while requesting to withdraw the prior DA’s motion as deficiently considering a key aspect of rehabilitation, a full and complete insight and acceptance of responsibility for the entire breadth of one’s crime. As a result, the fact that we are going to have a resentencing hearing is not unexpected," he explained.

Hochman added that the court "rejected the Menendez brothers’ argument that our request was based just ‘on the political winds,’ acknowledging that this Office has pursued an impartial, non-political agenda in this case grounded in the facts and the law."

"In this case, after a thorough and extensive analysis of the facts and the law, we concluded that the case was not ripe for resentencing based on the Menendez brothers’ continuing failure to exhibit full insight and accept complete responsibility for the entire gamut of their criminal actions and cover-up, including the fabrications of their self-defense defense and their lies concerning their father being a violent rapist, their mother being a poisoner, and their trying to obtain a handgun for self-defense the day before the murder," the DA said.

He further described Jose and Kitty Menendez's 1989 murders as "calculated, premeditated, cold-blooded killings."

Anamaria Baralt cheers her the result of her cousin's Friday hearing. (Fox News)

Mark Geragos, defense attorney for the Menendez brothers, cheered a judge's Friday decision to allow the brothers to move forward with a resentencing hearing next week.

Geragos said justice has been "a long time coming," and he "couldn't prouder for representing this family."

He said Friday's decision was "probably the biggest day since they've been in custody," referring to Erik and Lyle, adding later that it was "an important day, a great day."

Geragos condemned what he described as DA Nathan Hochman's "performative" actions.

Anamaria Baralt, the brothers' cousin, also celebrated Friday's decision.

"Their conclusion wasn't based on sympathy or politics. It was based on evidence," Baralt said of the judge's decision against withdrawing the brothers' petition for a new trial.

"They applied the law exactly as it was intended," she continued. "Erik and Lyle have taken full responsibility for what they did."

Mark Geragos walks out of an LA courthouse after Friday's Menendez hearing. (Fox News)

Judge Michael Jesic on Friday afternoon handed down a win to the Menendez brothers, deciding against withdrawing their petition for a new trial.

The decision comes after District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters on March 10 that he was seeking to withdraw former District Attorney George Gascon's motion for a resentencing hearing.

Resentencing proceedings will continue on April 17 and 18, Jesic said.

The Menendez brothers and their supporters have been pushing for a resentencing hearing, saying the brothers were unfairly convicted to life in prison in 1996 for murdering their two parents in Beverly Hills in 1989.

They have since come forward in documentaries and on social media saying their father sexually abused them, offering a different narrative of the killings than the story their attorneys told in the 1990s.

This combination of two booking photos provided by the California Department of Corrections shows Erik Menendez, left, and Lyle Menendez. (California Department of Corrections via AP, File)

Mark Geragos, the defense attorney for Erik and Lyle Menendez, will present his case as to why the brothers deserve a resentencing hearing in a Los Angeles County courthouse Friday afternoon.

Geragos previously accused the LA County District Attorney's Office of using tapes from the Menendez brothers' first 1994 trial but omitting the fact that it ended in a mistrial.

Geragos also says the DA's office did not bring up the brothers' allegations of sexual abuse against their parents.

The defense attorney further argues that California law allows their case to be considered for resentencing.

"This is a show proceeding for a DA that was elected as a throwback to the 90s," Geragos said, noting that the 90s were a time when many convictions ended in life sentences.

The defense attorney told the judge Friday afternoon the brothers "had such an outsize influence on the prison system."

Gascon’s actions in pushing for the brothers' resentencing were not political, Geragos argued, and the brothers’ lawyers had been doing work prior to the DA election with the habeas filing in May 2023.

“We were having a robust back and forth with the previous administration," he said.

Geragos accused current DA Nathan Hochman of “pandering to a contingent in his office that was dissatisfied with George Gascon” and said he was trying to be a “hardass 90s Neanderthal.” He said Hochman’s presser announcing he was filing to withdraw repeatedly called for Gov. Gavin Newsom to take matters into his own hands.

Deputy DA Bailan continued to argue that Hochman’s team did an “exhaustive, complete review” of the evidence and determined the brothers "haven’t changed… they are the same people they were back then.”

Bailan played clips of Erik confessing to a psychiatrist before his arrest and argued that the jury never heard that their criminal defense attorney set up that meeting to mitigate a potential sentence.

“They hadn’t concocted their self-defense story yet," Bailan said. "Most importantly, this was not mentioned in the people’s initial filing (under Gascon).”

Bailan argued that this showed a “criminal sophistication."

“These are grown men," he said. "Why are they sticking with the same lies today?”

Bailan then told the judge that he will need to decide if the Gascon motion was “legitimate or illegitimate” because there is “no doubt” the Hochman team’s review was legitimate.

The brothers again listened intently, occasionally inaudibly speaking to each other.

Cooper Koch, left, who played Erik Menendez on Netflix's "Monsters," appears outside a Los Angeles courthouse on Friday, April 11, 2025. Menendez and his brother were both attending a hearing that could decide whether or not they get a chance to have their sentences reduced. (Courtesy of KTTV)

Actor Cooper Koch, who played Erik Menendez in Netflix's "Monsters," a dramatization of the brothers' story, was pictured outside the Van Nuys courthouse, where Erik and his brother Lyle are remotely attending a hearing that could decide whether they are given an opportunity to argue for reduced sentences next week.

Criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh and trial attorney Heather Hansen break down the Menendez brothers hearing and a potential resentencing of the case on ‘America Reports.’

The court is in recess for lunch until 1:30 p.m. PT.

Geragos accused the prosecution of trying to relitigate the first trial, which ended in a mistrial before the brothers were convicted at their second trial, and putting on a dog and pony show. He also accused DDA Bailon of traumatizing the family, some of whom were attending the hearing, by showing graphic crime scene photos.  

"That displays exactly how political this is," he said. "This presentation is argument. Talk about beating a horse to death."

Judge Jesic says he's giving both sides "a lot of latitude" and that it appears the prosecution is trying to show the facts suggest the brothers are not rehabilitated.

Bailon says during their trials, the brothers "sold the story their parents were violent and wanted to kill them."  He went on the recount testimony involving how they obtained shotguns instead of handguns, which he argued would make more sense for self-defense. Bailon says the original Gascon motion did not address this issue.

Fox News chief correspondent Jonathan Hunt joins ‘America Reports’ with an update on the hearing for the Menendez brothers, who were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents.

The brothers' Attorney Mark Geragos left the courthouse at around 12:12 p.m. He did not speak with reporters, but a woman walking with him said he would answer questions later.

When court returned from a brief recess, the brothers' attorney Mark Geragos accused the prosecution of trying to drag today’s hearing out “Cory Booker-style” and adding that “they don’t want to finish today.”

The judge is allowing the prosecution to continue their presentation but is asking them to do so quickly.

Deputy District Attorney Habib Bailan begins the hearing by calling the initial move for reduced sentencing by ousted DA George Gascon, who lost re-election last year, politically motivated.

It came “two weeks before an election, when Mr. Gascon was down 30 points in the polls," he said.

"No action was taken with the habeas for about a year," he added, referring to a separate petition the brothers have filed that could also see them freed from prison or granted a new trial.

Bailan said that properly motivated resenting should reflect "rehabilitation and insight" in the defendants. While the brothers have behaved well behind bars, he said, that's not the only thing they need to do.

"The question is did they learn the most important lesson of all: Did they learn the severity and depravity of their conduct?" he said. "You must take responsibility. If you don't have insight...you might repeat the past."

The brothers never admitted to the "lie" that they killed their parents in self-defense, he said.

They snuck up behind them while they were watching TV and unloaded so many rounds they had to get more from a car outside.

At one point, Judge Michael Jesic interrupted him when he began talking about how much time Hochman went into reviewing the original case file compared to Gascon.

"I get different attorneys have different approaches," he said. "Some attorneys analyze differently."

The question in this case, he said, is whether Gascon's initial petition was "insufficient."

Reporting from Fox News' Melissa Chrise.

Lyle and Erik Menendez are seen as young men with their mugshots overlayed.

The push for freedom fro Erik and Lyle Menendez faces a new test today as a judge will consider Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s request to withdraw his predecessor George Gascon’s motion to resentence the brothers, who are serving life without parole for the shotgun murders of their parents in 1989. A formal resentencing hearing scheduled for next week hangs in the balance.