BREAKING …The latest showdown between Erik Menendez and Lyle Menendez and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has come down a pivotal notch.
In a surprising move this morning at a hearing in the Van Nuys courthouse, Menendez brothers lawyer Mark Geragos has withdrawn a motion to kick DA Nathan Hochman and his entire office off the case. Though more circumspect than usual with the media before Friday’s hearing, the high profile Geragos didn’t give a reason before Judge Micheal Jesic for the move.
The actual resentencing will now take place on May 13 and May 14. It is unknown at the moment if the Menendez brothers will testify remotely or not at all.
Earlier Friday, the incarcerated and now middle aged Lyle Menendez took to social media to lament the “reindeer games” of the brothers hopes to be free, as well the direction he assumed events were going to go. “So today is the day that issues will be worked out,” he said on Facebook from a state prison near San Diego where his brother also is housed. “The motion to disqualify the DA will be heard and very very likely will be denied. Then, in chambers, issues regarding the CRA will be decided.”
The CRA is the Comprehensive Risk Assessment report ordered from the state parole board earlier this year by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a part of his clemency consideration for the Menendezs. The partially completed document ended up in late April in the inbox of Deputy DA Habib Balian, who is overseeing the resentencing and the case’s parole aspects for Hochman. The presence of the report and the implications it presented, legal and otherwise, tossed a grenade into the long delayed April 17 resentencing hearing for the brothers. To that, Judge Jesic shut that hearing down after just a few hours and pushed resolution to today.
Judge Jesic today said that he will consider the CRA as a part of any resentencing. How much it will come to play is TBD.
Today’s session before comes a week after Hochman’s office pushed back hard on the recusal motion in what has become a dogfight or sorts between the parties over altering the siblings’ 1996 life without parole sentence. “The defense conflates a conflict of interest with zealous advocacy,” a May 2 opposition filing from the DA’s office proclaimed. “In our adversarial system of justice, the parties often do not agree These disagreements are neither novel nor improper. They are often necessary hallmarks of our adversarial system’s search for the truth.”
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