Governor Gavin Newsom is ordering the Board of Probation to set a risk assessment investigation into Si Erik and Lyle Menéndez, who are fulfilling perpetual chain for the murder of their parents in 1989, would represent a risk for public safety if they were Liberated, defense lawyer Mark Mark. Geragos said Wednesday.
The measure is a step towards clemency for the brothers, who have asked a court to take another look at their case in the midst of new accusations of sexual assault that say they corroborate a story of abuse by their father, José Menéndez. Los Angeles Dist. Atty County. Nathan Hochman said during a press conference last week that he opposed the brothers who were awarded a new trial.
“I hope that they will come out in 2025,” Geragos told Times on Wednesday.
The governor's office wrote in a letter to Geragos that the “main consideration of Newsom when evaluating switching requests is public safety, which includes the current level of risk of the applicant, the impact of a switching on victims and survivors, The self -development and conduct of the applicant from the crime from the crime. Risk mitigated to recidivate. ”
The Risk Assessment of the Board will be available to the Court and Hochman after the investigation is completed, according to the letter.
In addition to clemency, the brothers are also pursuing two other paths of potential freedom: a request for habeas corpus based on new evidence and resonsors.
A habeas corpus Petition presented on behalf of the brothers In the Superior Court of the Los Angeles County, in 2023, he argued that the new evidence, a 1988 letter sent from Erik Menéndez to his cousin saying that he had been abused late in his adolescence and the accusations made by another man saying that they had been violated by José, directly. He challenged the narrative prosecutors presented at the trial and raided the way for their case to be reconsidered.
Hochman said last week that he opposed the brothers a new trial, saying that the act of murder was the problem in the conviction, not the accusations of sexual abuse. But he stopped closing the possibility of resenting the brothers, saying that he would visit the problem in “the coming weeks.”
“Sexual abuse is abhorrent, and we will process sexual abuse,” Hochman said last week. “While it may have been a motivation for Erik and Lyle do what they did, it does not constitute their own defense.”
Newsom has said that he will not make a decision of clemency on the convictions for murder until after Hochman ends his review of the case.
The three decades in prison of the brothers could be scrutiny as part of their appeal to freedom. Hochman has previously said that, before making a decision on resanence, he needs to review not only the criminal case, but also the prison of the Menéndez brothers and his time after bars. He said that he must also ask if the brothers have been rehabilitated.
Companions, lawyers and rehabilitation workers have told the Times that the two have been deeply involved in rehabilitation programs, including the launch of their own projects to promote the rehabilitation of inmates in California prisons.
