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(LOS ANGELES) Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he’s asked the court to deny the Menendez brothers’ habeas corpus petition, which aims to get a new trial or the case tossed out.

Erik and Lyle Menendez filed the habeas corpus petition in 2023 for a review of new evidence not presented at trial.

Two new pieces of evidence are at the center of the petition.

One is a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin Andy Cano eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse from his father. The cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but the letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t found until several years ago, according to the brothers’ attorney.

The second piece is allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rossello, who revealed in 2023 that he was raped by the brothers’ father, Jose Menendez.

Hochman explained that the standard for a successful habeas petition has multiple requirements: You must show that it’s new evidence; you must show thats it’s timely and the evidence could not be discovered at the time of the trial; you must show you didn’t engage in a delay by the time you learned of the evidence and brought your motion; the evidence must be credible; and the evidence must be admissible.

Hochman argues the letter to Cano is not credible evidence.

“If this letter truly existed, the defense counsel would have absolutely used it at the trial because it would help corroborate” testimony from Cano and Erik Menendez, Hochman said.

Erik Menendez at his second trial testified for seven days about graphic descriptions of his sexual abuse from ages of 6 to 18 and also talked about the sexual abuse his brother experienced from their father, the district attorney said.

Asked who he disclosed to, Erik Menendez said he told Cano when he was 12 or 13 years old.

Cano — who died in 2003 — testified in the 1990s and relayed that same information: that Erik Menendez mentioned abuse six years before the murders and that was the only communication they had about the sexual abuse, the district attorney said.

That letter was never discussed at either of the two trials, Hochman said.

Erik Menendez claimed he didn’t know about the letter until a 2015 Barbara Walters special published it, but this habeas motion was not filed until 2023, Hochman said.

The defense in this habeas motion argued that to resolve this case jurors had to decide if the brothers were sexually molested by their father — but the jury never had to resolve that question, Hochman said. Instead, the jury had to determine if the brothers conspired to kill their parents, if they killed them, what their state of mind was, and if they did so, if they acted in self-defense, Hochman said.

Hochman said Rossello’s claims fail the admissibility standard for the habeas petition because the brothers didn’t know about Rossello’s allegations until recent years, so it couldn’t have influenced their state of mind during the crime and “couldn’t play a role in self-defense or premeditated murder.”

The brothers were convicted in 1996 of the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were 21 and 18, respectively, at the time, admitted to gunning down their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home. The defense claimed the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father, but prosecutors alleged they killed for money.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.

Besides the habeas corpus petition, the brothers have been pursuing two other paths to freedom.

One other path is through resentencing, which Hochman said his office will deal with in the coming weeks.

In October, then-LA County District Attorney George Gascón announced that he was recommending the brothers’ sentence of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and 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.

Hochman said in January that he was still reviewing the facts of the case and hadn’t yet decided if he’s in support of the brothers’ bid for freedom. He said he was reviewing thousands of pages of confidential prison records, trial transcripts and court filing, as well as speaking to all the prosecutors and defense attorneys involved.

The brothers’ next resentencing hearing is on March 20 and 21.

The third path to freedom is through clemency.

The brothers submitted a request for clemency to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In November, Newsom said he’d defer to Hochman’s “review and analysis of the Menendez case prior to making any clemency decisions.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — As world leaders mourn the death of former President Jimmy Carter and remark on his political and policy legacy, doctors are remembering his efforts to prevent disease, and his legacy in furthering global public health.

The 39th president spent five decades working to eradicate a parasitic disease, helped organize a major-drug donation program, and made advancements addressing the mental health crisis in the U.S.

Dr. Julie Jacobson, currently a managing partner of the nonprofit Bridges to Development, helped to provide funding for the Carter Center’s work in the Americas, Nigeria and Ethiopia while she worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for over a decade.

“He was hugely influential, I think particularly for the diseases that most of the world doesn’t appreciate even exist,” Jacobson told ABC News of Jimmy Carter’s work. “He was a true champion for the neglected tropical diseases, which are some of the most common infections of people who live with the least resources. And he found these diseases and then really wanted to do something about them, and used his voice, his influence, his passion, to continue to push forward where others were really not interested.”

Near-eradication of Guinea worm disease

Following his loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982, a non-profit organization that “seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health,” according to the Center’s website.

Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped spearhead a successful international campaign with the goal of eradicating dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection caused by consuming contaminated drinking water.

Water from ponds or other stagnant bodies of water can contain tiny crustaceans commonly known as water fleas, which in turn can be infected with Guinea worm larvae, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About one year after infecting a human host, the Guinea worm creates a blister on the skin and emerges from it, which can cause burning pain, fever and swelling, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization.

“Nobody else wanted to take it on,” Jimmy Carter told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during a 2015 interview on “Good Morning America”. “So, I decided to take it on.”

In 1986, Guinea worm disease afflicted 3.5 million people every year in 21 African and Asian countries. Disease incidence has since been reduced by 99.99%, to just 14 “provisional” human cases in 2023, according to the Carter Center.

Jacobson said that success is even more remarkable because there are no vaccines available to prevent Guinea worm disease and no drugs to treat it. Tracking Guinea worm disease, according to Jacobson, involves following possible cases for a year to determine if they are infected, checking to see if infected humans have any infected water sources near them, and monitoring the community as a whole.

“To think that you could eradicate a disease without any tools is really still just a crazy idea, but he did it with perseverance and working with people in the grassroots within communities and putting together teams of people to go and work with people in those communities and empower the communities,” Jacobson said.

The Carter Center says if efforts are successful, Guinea worm disease could become the second human disease in history to be completely eradicated, after smallpox, and the first to be done without the use of a vaccine or medicine.

Carter told ABC News during the 2015 interview that eradicating the disease entirely was his goal: “I think this is going to be a great achievement for, not for me, but for the people that have been afflicted and for the entire world to see diseases like this eradicated.”

Mass drug distribution for river blindness

The Carter Center also works to fight other preventable diseases, including the parasitic infections schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis – more commonly known as snail fever and elephantiasis, respectively – as well as trachoma, which is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable blindness. It’s also working with the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to eliminate lymphatic filariasis and malaria from the island of Hispaniola, which both countries share and which is “the last reservoir in the Caribbean for both diseases,” according to the Carter Center.

Carter and his organization also played a part in organizing a major drug-donation program to help eliminate onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, which is transmitted to human through repeated bites of infected blackflies, according to the CDC.

Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. had been implementing field studies in Africa which showed that the drug ivermectin was effective at treating river blindness in humans. The Carter Center partnered with Merck to mass-distribute ivermectin, brand name Mectizan, “as much as needed for as long as needed” in Africa and Latin America. To date, the Carter Center has assisted in distributing more than 500 million treatments of Mectizan, according to Merck.

In 1995, Carter negotiated a two-month cease-fire in Sudan to allow health care workers there to more safely help eradicate Guinea worm disease, prevent river blindness, and vaccinate children against polio.

“When we have known solutions, it is ethical to make sure they’re available to the people who need it most,” Dr. Usha Ramakrishnan, chair of the Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told ABC News. “And that’s where we were with river blindness. There was a treatment, but improving access to medications, making it affordable, reaching the people they need was very much along the lines of the work [the Carter Center] was doing.”

Addressing mental health

Carter was also committed to tackling mental health issues. During his presidency, he created the Presidential Commission on Mental Health, which recommended a national plan to care for people with chronic mental illness.

Although it was never adopted as policy by the Reagan administration, the plan’s recommended strategies were adopted by some mental health advocacy groups to “make gains in the 1980s,” according to one study.

Carter also signed into law the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which provided funding to community mental health centers.

After his presidency, Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter continued working to improve access to mental health.

Ramakrishnan said the Carters’ work helped to reduce some of the stigma associated with mental health.

“There continues to be a lot of stigma, but they truly got it out [in] the conversation and mainstreaming mental health as an important aspect of health and well-being,” Ramakrishnan said. “There’s still a lot of challenges, and there are many capable people that they have mentored and trained who are carrying that mantle forward.”

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(NEW YORK) — The Maui Police Department in Hawaii is investigating what led to a gas grill explosion at a Kaanapali Beach condo Thursday evening which left seven people injured.

The Maui Police Department, according to their statement, received reports of the explosion which took place at 2481 Kaanapali Parkway at approximately 6:15 p.m. and found seven people, from the ages 18 to 74, injured, ABC News’ Honolulu affiliate KITV reports.

Three of those seven people are currently in critical condition, and one had to be transported to the Maui Memorial Medical Center Emergency Room for further treatment, KITV said.

In livestream video obtained by ABC News, the explosion seemingly takes place in one of the middle floors of the condominium complex with beachgoers and other witnesses rushing toward the scene to help in the immediate aftermath.

Preliminary investigations suggest the explosion may have involved liquefied petroleum gas, commonly used for BBQs and, according to KITV, witness statements indicated there could have been a grill malfunction before the incident.

There are no further updates on the conditions of those involved and the public has been asked to avoid the area while first responders investigate.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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