Menendez Brothers Case: L.A. District Attorney Opposes Petition to Vacate Siblings' Conviction as It 'Could Be Part of a Continuum of Lies'

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman has announced his opposition to the petition to vacate the conviction of the Menendez brothers.

Hochman claimed that new evidence presented by the convicted brothers "could be part of a continuum of lies."

The Menendez brothers, Erik and Lyle, have been serving life sentences for the brutal murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

Their habeas corpus petition, which was filed in May of 2023, aims to overturn their convictions.

The petition centered on sexual abuse allegations by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, against Jose, whom he claims raped him in the 1980s. It also cited a letter Erik wrote to his now-deceased cousin Andy Cano describing his father’s alleged sexual abuse months before the killings.

During a press conference on Friday, February 21, the DA specifically noted the new evidence presented by the Menendez brothers’ counsel is not timely in the new trial, declaring it inadmissible in court.

"To say that this letter was not discovered until after the trial, as it’s been alleged in the defense papers, we believe, is just wrong," Hochman said.

The letter was first introduced in a 2015 Barbara Walters interview. However, it wasn't filed as new evidence for the trial until May 2023.

“The notion that this letter could be part of a continuum of lies and deceit and fabricating stories required us to go back into the history of the Menendez case to analyze whether or not that would be true,” he added.

Hochman returned to the new evidence proposed in the 1988 message to Erik’s cousin, noting that the "supposed letter" would have been relevant to the Menendez brothers’ legal team when they initially testified.

"We believe it’s inconceivable, as we’ve argued in our papers, and defies common sense, that if they had evidence that would show that sexual abuse had been communicated not just six years before the events, but nine months before the 1989 killings, that it would absolutely have come out during one or both of their testimonies," Hochman revealed.

"Sexual abuse is abhorrent, and we will prosecute sexual abuse in any form it comes. But sexual abuse, in this situation, while it may have been a motivation for Eric and Lyle to do what they did, does not constitute self-defense," he concluded.

As OK! previously reported, the Menendez brothers are still awaiting a decision by Hochman about a resentencing motion filed last October by then-Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who lost the 2024 election to Hochman.

Gascón announced his plan to recommend that Lyle and Erik each be resentenced to 50 years to life.