Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman met with the family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez for the first time amid their upcoming resentencing hearing, and he described their meeting as “useful.”

“What I’m doing is processing information,” Hochman, 61, said during a press conference on Friday, January 3. “So, we have not finished the review, for instance, of all the prison files and, again, it numbers in the thousands [of] pages, and it covers well over 30 years of prison experience for both Lyle and Erik Menendez, nor have I finished all the trial transcripts as well. We’re inputting that additional information that I received today, which was useful information in the entire decision matrix on what to do with this case.”

He continued, “Again, I have had the chance to read everything, anything these victim family members have either testified about or written, and hearing it live, directly from them is also a very useful additional way to learn that information.”

Hochman explained the ways he and his team have prepared for the case, including “reviewing thousands of pages of confidential prison records to analyze the rehabilitation aspect of resentencing, thousands of pages of transcripts from two months-long trials, talking to all the different prosecutors that have been involved with the Menendez case defense counsel and reviewing voluminous exhibits and pleadings.”

While Hochman specified that he has yet to make a decision on the Menendez brothers’ resentencing, he has been talking with various prosecutors and defense attorneys. He remained tight-lipped on the details of his conversations with Erik and Lyle’s family members, but added that he would “continue to approach this matter with the utmost care and diligence.”

“As you’re aware, the court has filed its motion for reconsideration and the court ultimately has the final call on whether it wants to reconsider the sentence at all and second if it does want to reconsider what the new sentence should be,” Hochman explained.

Anamaria Baralt, Erik and Lyle’s cousin and Jose Menendez’s niece, also gave a statement.

“This 35-year process has been incredibly traumatizing for us,” Baralt said per KTLA 5. “We are very much hoping that we can find a path to manslaughter, that we can see the release of the brothers immediately.”

The brothers were sentenced to life in prison for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. In October 2024, former L.A. District Attorney George Gascón officially recommended that Erik and Lyle be resentenced after spending more than 30 years behind bars.

“We are going to recommend to the court that the life without the possibility of parole be removed and that they will be sentenced for murder. Because there was two murders involved that would be 50 years to life,” Gascón stated at the time. “However, because of their age, under the law because they were under 26 years of age at the time that these crimes occurred, they will be eligible for parole immediately. When you look at the case of the Menendez brothers, you see two very young people, one was 19 and the other was 21 when they committed these horrible acts. And I want to underline, these were horrible acts. There is no excuse for murder.”

The resentencing hearing was originally set for December 11, 2024, but the date was pushed back to later this month.