(KTLA) – The Menendez brothers have waiting nearly three decades, and now they’ll have to wait a little longer to hear their fates.
Erik and Lyle Menendez appeared in front of a judge for the first time in 28 years at Southern California’s Van Nuys Courthouse on Monday through a screen — they attended virtually from their San Diego prison. Also in the courthouse were 16 members of the public who had to win a lottery on Monday morning to gain access to the hearing.
At that hearing, a judge with the Los Angeles County Superior Court decided to postpone the resentencing hearing until the end of January. It was originally scheduled for Dec. 11.
Monday’s hearing, a status hearing on that resentencing, started at about 10:30 a.m. Members of the Menendez family, including the sisters of the brothers’ mother Kitty, were in attendance.
The hearing was scheduled after L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón announced he supported resentencing for the brothers last month. He also said he would support clemency, which would come from the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A wrench was thrown into the institutional support for the brothers when voters in L.A. County decisively elected Nathan Hochman to take Gascón’s place in charge of the prosecutor’s office.
District Attorney-elect Hochman told KTLA shortly after his election victory that he hadn’t yet decided if he would continue the office’s support of resentencing.
“Here’s my approach, whether it’s the Menendez case or quite honestly any case: you have to do the hard work,” he told KTLA in an exclusive interview. “You have to look, in that case, at thousands of pages of confidential prison files, you have to review thousands of trial transcripts from months-long trials, and you have to speak to the prosecutors, law enforcement and the defense counsel … and the victims’ families.”
Newsom has since said that he will wait until the district attorney-elect reviews the case before he makes a decision on clemency.
The brothers have spent nearly 35 years in prison for the shotgun killings of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion.
The killings have never been in question — the pair admitted to brutally shooting their parents — but maintain that they acted in self defense after their father sexually abused them.
Newly discovered evidence surfaced last year pointing toward their claims having some weight. Roy Rosselló, former member of the boy band Menudo, has accused Jose of molesting him, and a letter written by Erik to his cousin just before the killings detailed the sexual assaults.
The brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996.
