Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Friday that he met with family of the Menendez brothers but has not yet decided whether he will recommend they be released from prison.
Hochman described the meeting with the family as “productive” but noted there is more work to be done to go through thousands of pages of information related to the high-profile murder case.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were both convicted of murder in the 1989 shooting deaths of their parents. They long maintained that they had suffered years of sexual abuse by their father.
Since then, the high-profile case has come back into the national spotlight, with some of their relatives calling for the pair to be resentenced and released.
Friday was the first time Hochman had officially weighed in on the case after his predecessor, George Gascón, recommended resentencing late last year.
A judge has to make the final decision, and a hearing date is set for late January.
At a news conference in downtown L.A., Hochman said he and his staff
were reviewing transcripts from two trials, appellate court decisions and confidential prison records. They are also speaking with prosecutors and defense lawyers who were involved with the Menendez case.
As part of that effort, Hochman said, he agreed to meet with the Menendez family.
“A number of the victims’ family members came in; it was a very productive session where they gave me all their thoughts about what should happen in this case, their experiences that they wanted to share, the ultimate direction that they wanted this case to go,” he said.
Hochman told reporters that the information the family members provided would be part of the “data set” he would use to determine what the right result should be.
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