The resentencing hearing for the Menendez brothers, who notoriously shot their parents to death in 1989, is being pushed back by nearly two months due to California’s devastating wildfires.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Friday that the resentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Menendez will now take place on March 20-21. The hearing was originally scheduled for January 30-31.
“The continuance is due to the impact of recent wildfires on the parties’ extensive preparations for the hearings,” Hochman wrote in a brief statement.
The LA fires have ravaged large swaths of Los Angeles, torching tens of thousands of acres and killing at least 27 people.
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The postponement is the latest development in the brothers’ ongoing fight for freedom.
Joseph Menendez, who goes by his middle name Lyle, and younger brother, Erik Menendez, have been in California prisons since 1996, serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for their parents’ 1989 slayings.
The brothers claim they shot their father, former RCA Records executive Jose Menendez, in self-defense, arguing they thought he was going to kill them after they warned him they planned to expose him as a child sex abuser.
They also killed their mother, Mary “Kitty” Menendez, who was sitting next to Jose eating ice cream in their Beverly Hills living room when they opened fire.
The brothers went on a $700,000 spending spree as investigators initially suspected a mob hit, but they were eventually arrested.
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Their first trial ended in a mistrial, when jurors couldn’t agree on their fate. After a second trial in the mid-1990s, in which some of their evidence about the alleged sexual abuse was excluded, jurors agreed with prosecutors that their motive was greed.
Hochman replaced progressive former District Attorney George Gascón, who had pushed for a resentencing that could have freed the brothers under a new California law.
But he lost in a landslide to Hochman, an independent, who said he would fully review the facts of each brother’s case before taking a stance.
About two dozen of their relatives support freedom for the brothers. There has also been public support for their release after a series of documentaries explored their claims of child abuse at the hands of their father, a former RCA Records executive.
Milton Andersen, the men’s uncle, opposes any leniency for his nephews.
The brothers’ attorney says new evidence bolsters their case: Roy Rosello, a member of the 1980s boy band Menudo, came forward with his own allegations of abuse against Jose Menendez in 2023. And a letter, purportedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the murders, could support some of the latter’s trial testimony about Jose Menendez. Cano died in 2003, and the letter’s authenticity has been called into question in court filings.
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