The new Los Angeles County District Attorney has stated that the Menendez brothers lack "credible evidence" to receive a new trial for their case following the 1989 murders of their parents, which the siblings are currently serving life sentences for.
Nathan Hochman, who has been serving as LA County's DA since December 2024, stated that new evidence submitted by the brothers' attorneys symbolized "a continuum of lies and deceit and fabricating stories."
"We conclude in our informal response that the court should deny the current habeas corpus petition," the DA said Friday. "We do not believe they qualify to get a new trial." He also listed multiple courts that rejected the Menendez brothers' appeals after they received their sentences nearly 30 years ago.
Hochman referred to one piece of novel evidence presented by the brothers' lawyers last year, a 1988 letter sent by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano in which he detailed the sexual abuse he was subjected to at the hands of his father.
"So, to say that this letter was not discovered until after the trial, as it has been alleged in the defense papers, we believe is just wrong," Hochman said. "We argue in many different ways, it is not credible evidence."
"It calls into question whether or not this is in fact a 1988 letter written by Erik Menendez to Andy Cano about this sexual abuse," Hochman added, reiterating that sexual abuse "does not justify killing your parents."
"District Attorney Nathan Hochman took us right back to 1996 today. He opened the wounds we have spent decades trying to heal," said the Menendez brothers in a letter criticizing Hochman's "abhorrent dismissal of abuse evidence."
"He didn't listen to us. We are profoundly disappointed by his remarks, in which he effectively tore up new evidence and discredited the trauma they experienced," the letter continued.
"We have not made a decision on the resentencing," the DA asserted. "We are still in the process of not just analyzing trial evidence, but analyzing the rehabilitation and the other evidence that's required in a resentencing motion."
Originally published on Latin Times
