California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a 75-page brief this week opposing a motion to recuse the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office from the ongoing resentencing proceedings of Erik and Lyle Menendez.
The Attorney General’s position should come as no surprise. Under Bonta—and his predecessors Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra—the California Department of Justice has shown a pattern of resisting prosecutorial accountability when it matters most.
At stake here is whether the DA’s office can ethically oversee resentencing proceedings in a case involving a family that has long been at odds with prosecutors. The Menendez brothers were convicted in the 1990s of killing their parents.
Now, they seek resentencing under new California laws, but Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s office has opposed every step of that process.
The defense has moved to disqualify the DA’s office, citing multiple conflicts—including the hiring of a victims’ rights advocate with prior ties to a key opposing family member, and what they allege is a pattern of bias and exclusion of Marsy’s Law protections.
The AG’s opposition, however, does not meaningfully address the core issue: when the very prosecutors who hold power over a resentencing decision have personal or institutional bias, or even the appearance of such bias, justice is imperiled. Yet once again, the state’s top law enforcement office has stepped in—not to ensure impartiality, but to protect entrenched prosecutorial power.
This isn’t new. When the Orange County informant scandal erupted—exposing that prosecutors had for years operated a secret jailhouse informant program violating defendants’ rights—the Attorney General’s Office defended the OCDA’s conduct in court, rejecting calls for recusal.
In San Luis Obispo, the AG’s office similarly resisted removing a DA’s office embroiled in political retaliation against Black Lives Matter protesters. In San Francisco, the AG has avoided intervention despite multiple incidents raising serious ethical questions. And now, in Los Angeles, the pattern continues.
In their filing, Bonta’s office claims the defense “confuses disagreement with a legally cognizable conflict of interest” and fails to meet the stringent standard under Penal Code §1424 for office-wide recusal. They argue that simply replacing or transferring prosecutors who supported resentencing does not demonstrate bias, and that prior employment of a victim advocate with ties to the case does not warrant disqualification—especially if that person is ethically walled off from involvement.
But this defense misses the forest for the trees. Resentencing is not just about process. It’s about the perception—and reality—of fairness. When an office is so entrenched in its position that it cannot consider new evidence or shifting legal frameworks without protecting its prior convictions, justice demands an outside review.
Consider this: in the Menendez case, the AG’s brief repeatedly emphasizes that “zealous advocacy” and even prosecutorial overreach are not grounds for recusal. That may be technically true under current law, but it speaks to a broader philosophical problem. Prosecutors are meant to be ministers of justice, not warriors for past convictions at all costs. When every new administration simply inherits the institutional biases of its predecessors, we are not engaged in justice—we are preserving injustice.
The motion to recuse the DA’s office did not arise in a vacuum. It followed documented instances where the victims’ families were reportedly excluded from meetings, where key figures opposing resentencing were brought into the DA’s inner circle, and where internal reshuffling seemed designed to sideline those previously open to resentencing.
The defense argues that the DA’s Office has shown repeated hostility toward a fair reconsideration of the case, and that Hochman’s leadership has ensured the office remains fundamentally opposed to the brothers’ claims.
Rather than view these allegations seriously, the Attorney General’s Office downplays them as mere “disagreement,” dismisses Marsy’s Law concerns, and frames the entire issue as a political dispute that should not interfere with prosecutorial discretion. This reveals the heart of the problem: an institutional reluctance to ever second-guess district attorneys, even when their conduct suggests partiality.
This is particularly galling in light of the national conversation on prosecutorial accountability and the growing body of evidence that shows how entrenched biases—especially against those in high-profile or politically fraught cases—can lead to unjust outcomes. We cannot keep pretending that the same DA offices that seek to protect their legacy can impartially assess whether they got things wrong.
The public deserves better. California deserves better. When the state’s own justice department continually sides with prosecutors over accountability, it signals that power matters more than fairness.
The Menendez brothers may not be sympathetic figures to all—but that’s not the point. Every person, no matter how notorious, deserves a process free from conflict, bias, and institutional self-preservation.
If the Attorney General won’t step up to enforce prosecutorial neutrality, who will?
“This is particularly galling in light of the national conversation on prosecutorial accountability and the growing body of evidence that shows how entrenched biases—especially against those in high-profile or politically fraught cases—can lead to unjust outcomes.”
I can help but thinking about Trump and the New York justice system.