Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Monday he’s asking the court to withdraw the previous district attorney’s motion for resentencing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, calling the brothers’ claims of self-defense part of a litany of “lies.”

“Our position is that they shouldn’t get out of jail,” Hochman said at a news conference Monday. “We bring that position to the court. The court can agree with it, the court can disagree with it or modify it in some respect.”

Hochman said his office is “prepared to go forward” with the hearing regarding their resentencing case.

The hearing is set for March 20 and 21 for the brothers, who are serving life without the possibility of parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez.

MORE: Menendez brothers’ cousin calls DA ‘hostile,’ ‘patronizing,’ asks for his removal from case

Hochman argued that because the “brothers persist in telling these lies for the last over 30 years about their self-defense defense and persist in insisting that they did not suborn any perjury or attempt to suborn perjury, then they do not meet the standards for resentencing. They do not meet the standards for rehabilitation.”

“If the Menendez brothers, at some point, unequivocally, sincerely and fully accept complete responsibility for all their criminal actions, acknowledge that the self-defense defense was phony and their parents weren’t going to kill them … and finally come clean with the court, with the public, with the DA’s office, with their own family members and acknowledge all these lies … in the future, the court can weigh these new insights into making a determination as to whether they now qualify for rehabilitation and re-sentencing. And the [DA’s office] will do the same,” Hochman said.

The DA said his decision comes after reviewing trial transcripts, prison records and videotaped trial testimony, as well as meeting with Menendez family members, defense attorneys and past prosecutors.

Hochman stressed the premeditation, noting the brothers drove to San Diego days before the murders to buy shotguns with a fake ID, and on the night of the murders, they planned an alibi and went to buy movie tickets, he said.

MORE: Menendez brothers’ cousin ‘gasped in relief’ to learn Newsom is addressing clemency request

After Jose and Kitty Menendez were fatally shot, the brothers allegedly shot them again in the kneecaps to try to make the slayings look like a gang shooting, Hochman said.

The brothers “also had the presence of mind to pick up all the shotgun shells” to try to hide their fingerprints, and then they ditched their bloody clothes and the weapons, Hochman said.

Hochman said the brothers told 20 lies and have since admitted to only four; he said 16 lies remain “unacknowledged.”

The brothers initially proclaimed their innocence and said the murders may have been Mafia hits.

The truth about the brothers being responsible came after Erik Menendez confessed to his therapist and that confession tape was turned over to the police.

“They convinced, not just the media, not just the police, but their family and their friends that they were 100% innocent of these crimes, until eventually these tapes came out,” Hochman said.

The “next iteration of the story” was when Lyle Menendez allegedly asked his girlfriend to claim Jose Menendez drugged and raped her, Hochman said.

The brothers later said Erik Menendez was raped by their father and Lyle Menendez was raped by their mother, he said.

MORE: Menendez brothers timeline: From the 1989 murders to their new fight for freedom

At trial, the brothers claimed self-defense, saying they were victims of sex abuse from their father and believed their parents were going to kill them.

But Hochman claimed “the self-defense defense was a fabrication.”

Self-defense wasn’t mentioned in the confession to the therapist, according to Hochman.

“What Erik said is that [his father] was a controlling, dominating force, and that is the reason,” Hochman said. “He said the mother would be a witness to the crime, so she had to die, [and she] was so miserable because the father had an affair … [and] the mother could not live without the father.”

The “brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense as well as suborned perjury and attempted to suborn perjury by their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently raping Lyle’s girlfriend, their mother poisoning the family, and their attempt to get a handgun the day before the murders,” the DA said in a statement.

Hochman said the brothers “lied when they testified that when they burst into the den with their shotguns, that it was too dark to see and their parents were standing up or moving.”

“Expert testimony showed that, at all times, the parents were seated on the couch” or wounded on the ground when shot, he said.

The brothers also “lied when they testified that they thought their parents were going to kill them” on their family fishing trip one day before the murders, Hochman said.

MORE: Menendez brothers: Newsom orders parole board to investigate whether they’d pose ‘unreasonable risk’ to public if released

After Hochman’s press conference, Lyle Menendez posted on Facebook that “of all those ‘lies’ [Hochman] talked about, several of them were admitted/stipulated to in the first trial. … And several other ‘lies’ were absolutely disproven or reasonably disputed.”

Menendez family members who want the brothers released also slammed the DA’s announcement, saying Hochman is ignoring “the fact they were repeatedly abused, feared for their lives, and have atoned for their actions.”

“Erik and Lyle are not the same young boys they were more than 30 years ago,” the family said in a statement. “They have apologized for their actions, which were the results of Jose’s sexual abuse and Kitty’s enablement. They have apologized for the horrific actions they took. They have apologized to us. And, they have demonstrated their atonement through actions that have helped improve countless lives. Yet, DA Hochman is effectively asking for them to publicly apologize to a checklist of actions they took in a state of shock and fear.”

The family also attacked Hochman for what they called his “not-so-veiled insistence” that the brothers weren’t sexually abused.

Hochman “sent a message to every young boy who’s the victim of abuse that they should not come forward,” the family said.

At Monday’s news conference, Hochman frequently referenced California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2022 decision to deny parole to Robert F. Kennedy’s killer, Sirhan Sirhan, citing that case as the precedent the judge should consider with the Menendez brothers.

Although Sirhan — like the Menendez brothers — spent decades in prison rehabilitating himself, including achieving degrees and participating in prison programs, and he had letters of support, Newsom denied Sirhan parole because he “failed to exhibit insight and completely accept responsibility,” making him “an unreasonable risk of danger to the community,” Hochman said.

MORE: Menendez brothers case: DA asks court to deny their petition for new trial

The court needs to “analyze whether the Menendez brothers’ lack of full insight and lack of complete responsibility for their murders overcomes … the other factors justifying a resentencing like the Menendez’s length of time in prison, their age at the time of the murders, their upbringing and any sexual abuse they experienced, their extensive rehabilitation efforts in prison including getting educational degrees and involvement in community and prison programs, any supportive letters from prison officials and victim family members, their health, and the low prison risk score,” Hochman said.

In October, then-LA County District Attorney George Gascón announced he supported resentencing for the brothers. Gascón recommended their sentences of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and said they should instead be sentenced for murder, which would be a sentence of 50 years to life. Because both brothers were under 26 at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately with the new sentence.

The DA’s office said its resentencing recommendations take into account many factors, including rehabilitation in prison and abuse or trauma that contributed to the crime. Gascón praised the work Lyle and Erik Menendez did behind bars to rehabilitate themselves and help other inmates.

Weeks after Gascón’s announcement, he lost his race for reelection to Hochman. When Hochman came into office on Dec. 3, he promised to review all the facts before reaching his own decision.

Hochman’s announcement on Monday comes days after one of the brothers’ cousins, Tamara Goodell, slammed the DA in a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office Civil Rights Division.

Goodell accused Hochman of being “hostile, dismissive and patronizing” during two meetings in January with family members who want the brothers released. She said the “lack of compassion was palpable, and the family left feeling not only ignored but further intimidated and revictimized.”

Goodell wants Hochman removed and the case turned over to the attorney general’s office.

Besides resentencing, the brothers have been pursuing two other paths to freedom.

One is their habeas corpus petition, which they filed in 2023 for a review of two new pieces of evidence not presented at trial: a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father, and allegations from a former boy band member who revealed in 2023 that he was raped by Jose Menendez.

Hochman announced in February that he’s asked the court to deny the habeas corpus petition, arguing the new evidence isn’t credible or admissible.

The third path to freedom is through the brothers’ request for clemency, which has been submitted to Newsom.

On Feb. 26, Newsom announced that he’s ordering the parole board to conduct a 90-day “comprehensive risk assessment” investigation into whether the brothers pose “an unreasonable risk to the public” if they’re granted clemency and released.

“There’s no guarantee of outcome here,” Newsom said. “But this process simply provides more transparency … as well as provides us more due diligence before I make any determination for clemency.”

Menendez brothers case: DA asks court to withdraw resentencing motion, calls self-defense claims ‘lies’ originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Two NASA astronauts who have been in space for more than nine months awaiting a return trip to Earth are finally set to come home.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who have been aboard the International Space Station since last June last year — are due to undock with the SpaceX Crew-9 on March 16, after the arrival of a relief crew that is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday night.

Late last week, NASA officially cleared the Crew-10 mission carrying the NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the ISS.

On Sunday, Crew-10 completed a “dry dress rehearsal” for its March 12 launch aboard the Endurance capsule.

“After Crew-10 arrives, Crew-9 will help the newly arrived crew familiarize with ongoing science and station maintenance work,” NASA said.

After a two-day handover period, NASA and SpaceX will prepare to return Williams and Wilmore, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, aboard the Freedom capsule, “pending weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida.”

🚀 How we got here

Last June, Williams and Wilmore launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard Boeing’s new Starliner, on what was supposed to be an eight-day test mission. But helium leaks and thruster failures almost derailed their arrival at the ISS, and have kept them at the orbiting lab ever since.

In August, NASA announced that issues with the Starliner were more serious than first thought and that Williams and Wilmore would instead hitch a ride back to Earth with the SpaceX Crew-9 capsule in February, instead of waiting for tests on the Starliner to be completed.

In December, NASA announced that SpaceX needed more time to complete the capsule it would need for the launch of Crew-10, which under NASA’s normal protocols, would need to arrive before Crew-9 leaves the space station.

“NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 now is targeting no earlier than late March 2025 to launch four crew members to the International Space Station,” the space agency said at the time.

In January, after taking office, President Trump said that he had ordered SpaceX founder Elon Musk to “go get” the two NASA astronauts, while blaming the previous administration for the delays.

👨‍🚀👩‍🚀 What the astronauts are saying

While their stay aboard the space station was unexpectedly extended, Wilmore and Williams, like all NASA astronauts, had trained for a lengthy mission. They have repeatedly said that they do not feel “stranded” in space.

At a news conference last week, Wilmore said that politics was not a factor in delaying their return to Earth.

“From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all,” Wilmore said. “We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That’s what we do in human space flight. That’s what your nation’s human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.”

But both astronauts said they are eager to reunite with their families.

“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” Williams said. “We’re here. We have a mission. We’re just just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting, because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun.”

Five years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, COVID is usually discussed in the past tense — as a thing that happened.

But no event as monumental as COVID simply goes away. The disease forced us to rearrange our society nearly overnight. Even though the days of lockdowns and mass death are behind us, disruption of that scale is bound to have a lasting, if not permanent, impact.

America is simply a different country today than it was before COVID arrived, though some of the aftereffects are difficult to measure. The pandemic undoubtedly altered U.S. politics, for example, but how much and in which directions is hard to quantify given all of the other factors at play.

More than a million deaths and counting

The most important and obvious result of COVID is all of the lives that it took — and continues to take. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.2 million people in the United States have died of COVID-related illnesses. During the first wave of infections, as many as 15,000 people were dying every week. A later, even deadlier wave, that started in late 2020 peaked at more than 25,000 weekly deaths. Though those days are thankfully behind us, COVID is still killing several hundred people every week.

Lasting health impacts

The virus’s health impact goes beyond mortality, of course. There have been more than 100 million confirmed cases of COVID in the U.S., though that figure likely dramatically underestimates the actual total. Most people recovered fully, but some didn’t. Millions reported dealing with lingering, in some cases debilitating, effects of long COVID.

In 2024, there were 4 million more Americans living with a disability than there were five years prior. Not all of that increase can be attributed to COVID directly, but there has been a significant increase in the number of people reporting a cognitive impairment over the past five years.

The way we work

When communal spaces abruptly became the sites of deadly virus transmission, America’s white collar workforce suddenly had to learn how to do their jobs remotely. A lot of them never came back to the office. According to the most recent available data, more than a third of U.S. workers now do some or all of their work from home.

Employers have been trying to coax their workers back into the office for years now, but with only limited success. Many at-home workers like their remote arrangement so much that they would be willing to take a pay cut or even quit to keep it.

Beyond the impact on individual companies, the rise of remote work has also dealt a massive blow to the commercial real estate industry. According to one estimate, office buildings across the country have lost a total of $250 billion in value because so much space is sitting vacant. Some cities have all but given up on some of those offices ever being filled again and begun the difficult process of trying to convert them into residential housing.

The way we learn

America’s schools also closed en masse in the early stages of the pandemic. Unlike remote work, which has had an unclear impact on worker productivity, distance learning proved to be a poor substitute for in-person instruction for most students. The disruptions of the pandemic caused widespread learning loss that still hasn’t been remedied five years later. Anger over what many feel were unnecessary or excessively long school closures has helped fuel a stark decline in satisfaction with the nation’s schools. The majority of states have seen public school enrollment drop from pre-pandemic levels.

School closures also served as an impromptu nationwide experiment in homeschooling. While many parents were eager to get their children back into the classroom, millions decided that educating their children in their own homes was the better choice for their families. Homeschooling has a long history in the U.S., but in recent years it has evolved from its religious roots to become more diverse — both in its structure and the types of families that practice it.

The way we vaccinate

Data from America’s schools is also one of the best ways of measuring another significant post-pandemic social trend: Increased skepticism of vaccines. Anti-vaccine sentiment is nothing new in America. But that view has become increasingly widespread over the past few years as unfounded fears about COVID-19 vaccines appear to have spilled over into more general distrust of all inoculations. As the recent measles outbreak in Texas has shown, this shift can have deadly consequences.

The way we watch

The film industry was dealt a particularly big blow by the coronavirus. Annual box office revenue fell by $9 billion after theaters throughout the country were forced to shutter. Productions also ground to a halt, meaning there were fewer releases to draw audiences back to the cinema once safety concerns faded away. The industry has made significant progress over the past few years, but its output and earnings are still well below where they were at the start of the pandemic.

With no choice but to seek entertainment at home, Americans turned to their TVs, and studios poured billions into streaming platforms to secure their share of the audience. Over the past five years, our relationship to television has fundamentally changed. Traditional cable has cratered while streaming services have boomed. Last year, audiences watched 23 million years’ worth of streaming content, according to Nielsen. This shift doesn’t just affect how we enjoy TV, it could have major repercussions on the industry’s long-term health.

The way we spend

Beyond any one industry, the pandemic has had a lasting effect on the U.S. economy as a whole, but not in the way most would have expected when the world ground to a halt five years ago. The economy took a nosedive at first, but rebounded quickly — thanks in part to trillions of dollars in stimulus from Congress. By early 2021, it had not only recovered pandemic losses, but was surging.

The past few years have seen steady economic growth, low unemployment, rising wages and record highs in the stock market. But those positive trends have been paired with stubbornly high inflation that has driven prices of key consumer goods up and up.

Nowhere has the post-pandemic price spike been more impactful than in housing. A surge in newly remote workers looking for more space and city dwellers relocating to less densely populated areas caused demand to skyrocket in a housing market that was already dealing with a chronic supply shortage. In just two years, the average sale price of a home in the U.S. increased by more than $150,000. Price pressure didn’t only impact homeowners. Renters have also seen their housing costs increase substantially. High interest rates have steadied things to a certain extent, but housing is still less affordable than it has been in decades.