Incoming Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman says one of his first orders of business is tackling Erik and Lyle Melendez's bid for freedom ... and the clock's ticking.
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00:00So the way I will handle the Menendez case is the way I'd handle every case.
00:06I will thoroughly go over the facts and the law.
00:09The thing with the Menendez case is in order to do that, you'd have to go over thousands
00:14of pages of confidential prison files that I don't have access to, or the public for
00:18that matter.
00:19You'd have to go over thousands of pages of trial transcripts.
00:22You'd want to meet with the actual prosecutors, law enforcement officers.
00:27You'd want to meet with defense counsel.
00:29You want to review the thousands of pages of exhibits that defense counsel are relying
00:34on, including new exhibits.
00:36You also want to meet with the victim family members.
00:38Only at that point will a DA, and if this case lands on my desk after December 2nd,
00:45I will be that DA, will be in a position to properly evaluate whether the resentencing
00:50request that's already been filed is appropriate, whether a clemency request that the DA has
00:56made is appropriate.
00:58They haven't actually taken the position yet on the habeas matter that's before the court,
01:02I think the week of November 25th.
01:04So this may or may not land on my desk, but this will be the methodology I engage in to
01:09actually have a well-informed, thoroughly thought-through decision.
01:14If the DA, Gascon, truly believed that they should be resentenced, he'd been sitting on
01:19the resentencing motion for eight months.
01:21He'd been sitting on the habeas motion for 16 months.
01:24At any point, he could have gone ahead and done it, but it wouldn't have helped him during
01:28the election because he made his decision 12 days before the election.
01:32Or he could have made the decision on November 6th, 7th, or 8th, just after the election,
01:37because he's going to be the DA all the way through December 1st.
01:40By making the decision right in the heart of a campaign, when he was 30 points down
01:46and had no money in the bank but needed the media attention, what he's effectively done
01:50is cast a cloud over the credibility as to whether or not it truly is a just decision
01:56or it was just for his political benefit.
01:59Again, if it does land on my desk, I will do the hard work to thoroughly research the
02:04facts in the law and make an appropriate decision.