Gavin Newsom said this week that he will postpone a decision on clemency for the Menéndez brothers until the new Los Angeles district attorney reviews the case.
George Gascón, the current DA, announced late last month that he would recommend the brothers Lyle and Erik be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents, arguing they had “paid their debt to society” and wrote to the governor in support of the pair. The brothers have long said they killed their parents after years of abuse.
Earlier this month, voters ousted progressive Gascón in favor of Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor who had argued his competitor’s policies amounted to “pro-criminal directives”. California’s governor will “defer to the DA-elect’s review and analysis of the Menéndez case prior to making any clemency decisions”, Newsom’s office said in a statement to the media.
“The governor respects the role of the district attorney in ensuring justice is served and recognizes that voters have entrusted District Attorney-elect [Nathan] Hochman to carry out this responsibility.”
Hochman had criticized Gascón over the timing of his decision in the Menéndez brothers case, two weeks before the election, calling it a “desperate political move”.
Erik and Lyle Menéndez were sentenced to two consecutive life terms in 1996 when a jury found them guilty of first-degree murder in the killings of their parents, José and Kitty. Lyle, then 21, and Erik, then 18, shot their parents multiple times as they watched television in their Beverly Hills home in August 1989. Erik is now 53 and Lyle is 56.
Prosecutors argued they were cold-blooded killers who violently murdered their parents for money, but the brothers said they feared their parents were going to kill them to cover up years of sexual, psychological and physical abuse.
Family members have confirmed their accounts of abuse and have long advocated for their release. In recent years the brothers have amassed a large network of supporters, including high-profile criminal justice advocates such as Kim Kardashian.
Gascón announced a review of the case in October in response to new evidence, including a letter written by Erik before the killings that corroborated his allegations of abuse and an allegation by a former member of the band Menudo who said that José Menéndez, a former record company executive, had raped him.
Hochman said in a statement to media he looked forward to putting in the “hard work to thoroughly review the facts and law of the Menéndez case”.
Tammi Menéndez, Erik’s wife, described the developments as frustrating on social media.
“It sounds like this case is being used for political maneuvering rather than focusing on the real issues at hand,” she said.
