Family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez have filed court papers alleging that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office needlessly showed a bloody crime scene photo without any advance notice during a court hearing last week in Van Nuys.

In a motion released Tuesday, an attorney representing nearly 20 family members wrote that the “entire District Attorney’s Office, including District Attorney Nathan Hochman and Assistant Head Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian, owe the victims’ family members an apology for their scandalous behavior.”

Saying the brothers have not shown they understand the “severity and depravity” of their actions in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun killings of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, Balian argued last Friday that the brothers should remain behind bars.

To emphasize his point about the brutality of the crime, the prosecutor displayed a crime scene photo of Jose Menendez dead on a couch, covered in blood, on a screen inside the packed courtroom.

Balian apologized in court to the victims’ family after one of the brothers’ attorneys, Mark Geragos, objected to the prosecution’s display of the graphic photo “without warning” to family members.

In his motion, the family’s attorney, Bryan J. Freedman, wrote that a “grotesque spectacle occurred” and asked the court to “ensure such a mockery never occurs again.”

“… The victims’ family members were shocked, sickened, and traumatized by the District Attorney’s callous act,” Freedman wrote, adding that Jose Menendez’s 85-year-old sister, Terry Baralt, “experienced such severe emotional distress” that she was hospitalized soon afterward.

“Here, it is patently obvious that the district attorney treated the victims’ family members as second-class victims, due to a policy disagreement between District Attorney Hochman and the victims’ family members,” Freedman added. “The district attorney represents all victims, not simply those that share the office’s policy views.”

The motion is asking Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic to admonish the District Attorney’s Office for its conduct and to require the district attorney to “provide the victims’ family members with advance notice of any exhibits or other evidence it intends to introduce at any further post-conviction proceedings in this matter.”

The District Attorney’s Office could not be reached for immediate comment on the motion but said in a statement issued Sunday, “We never intend to cause distress or pain to individuals who attend a court hearing. We understand the nature of the evidence of these heinous double murders was deeply emotional. However, by design these hearings are intended to be a place where the truth, no matter how painful, is brought to light. That truth starts with the abject brutality and premeditation of the murders themselves.

“To the extent that the photographic depiction of this conduct upset any of the Menendez family members present in court, we apologize for not giving prior warning that the conduct would be described in detail not only in words but also through a crime scene photo … We caution anyone attending a hearing in person to be prepared for some of the difficult details and images surrounding these tragic circumstances,” the statement added.

A potential re-sentencing hearing is set to begin Thursday for the two brothers, who are currently serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

At the hearing last week, the judge rejected a bid by the District Attorney’s Office to withdraw an earlier motion by prior District Attorney George Gascón supporting re-sentencing for the two. Hochman opposes the brothers’ release from prison.

Attorneys for Erik Menendez, 54, and Lyle Menendez, 57, are hoping to have them re-sentenced to a lesser term, either allowing them to be released or become eligible for parole.

The two claim the killings were committed after years of abuse, including alleged sexual abuse by their father.

The brothers, sitting side by side in prison blues, appeared last Friday at the hearing via Zoom from the San Diego prison where they are incarcerated, but they did not make any statements.

“They’ve waited a long time to get some justice,” Geragos said after Friday’s hearing. “Today is actually probably the biggest day since they’ve been incarcerated. Justice won over politics.”

One of the brothers’ cousins, Anamaria Baralt, said the two have shown “remorse and rehabilitation” while imprisoned, and “have repeatedly taken responsibility” for their crimes.

Following the judge’s ruling, Hochman issued a statement saying his office has been prepared to make its case at a re-sentencing hearing, and the fact that such a hearing will be held next week “is not unexpected.” But he said prosecutors will continue to oppose their release.

“These murders were calculated, premeditated, cold-blooded killings,” Hochman said. “Our position remains clear: Until the Menendez brothers finally come clean with all their lies of self-defense and suborning and attempting to suborn perjury, they are not rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety.”

During his argument, Geragos said the brothers “have done more good (and) helped more prisoners” than anyone could expect during their 35 years behind bars.

Erik Menendez “has got levels of insight that the average person … couldn’t understand,” Geragos said. “… They’re remarkable human beings. People can change.”

Meanwhile, state parole boards will conduct separate hearings for the brothers on June 13, then send their reports to Gov. Gavin Newsom to help him decide whether the two should receive clemency, the governor said.

In a 2023 court petition, attorneys for the brothers pointed to two new pieces of evidence they contend corroborate the brothers’ allegations of long-term sexual abuse at the hands of their father — a letter allegedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano in early 1989 or late 1988, and recent allegations by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, that he too was sexually abused by Jose Menendez as a teenager.

Interest in the case surged following the release of a recent Netflix documentary and dramatic series.

The governor said that with the exception of brief clips on social media he has not watched dramatizations of the Menendez case or documentaries on it “because I don’t want to be influenced by them.”

“I just want to be influenced by the facts,” Newsom said.