The Los Angeles district legal professional denied killer brothers, Erik and Lyle Menendez, a brand new trial Friday, shutting off one path to freedom for the infamous Malibu pair.
DA Nathan Hochman introduced his suggestion throughout a press convention 30 years after the brothers had been discovered responsible of the shotgun slayings of their rich mother and father.
The convicted killers had requested for a brand new trial based mostly on newly-surfaced proof that that they had been molested by their father Jose Menendez, together with a notice Erik wrote in 1988 detailing the abuse, in addition to a declare from a member of the band Menudo that Jose had molested him, too.
However after reviewing the proof, Hochman didn’t purchase the brothers’ argument: He argued that corroborating proof was too weak to justify a brand new trial and identified that even through the authentic trial within the Nineteen Nineties, the self-defense declare was the brothers’ fourth model of the occasions.
” What I consider is that they testified to that sexual abuse. They completely testified to it in nice element. I additionally perceive that when it got here to any corroborating details about that sexual abuse, it was extraordinarily missing,” Hochman instructed reporters.
“And the fact that it was their fourth version – in other words, they didn’t come out initially and say, ’We killed our parents because our father sexually abused us. They didn’t go ahead and when they got arrested, tell anyone that,’” the DA continued.
Even when the courtroom follows the DA’s suggestion, hope is just not misplaced for the brothers, who got here again to the highlight final yr following a success Netflix documentary about their case.
The pair has additionally requested the courtroom for resentencing, a pardon from the governor, and eligibility for parole based mostly on proof of rehabilitation and good habits behind bars.
” Rehabilitation is just not a problem for the habeas movement [for a new trial], and I need to make that crystal clear that every one the discuss rehabilitation will likely be speak that will likely be targeted on within the resentencing movement,” Hochman stated.
