Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman will not seek the death penalty when his office tries Nick Reiner for the 2025 murders of his parents, actor and director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Reiner.
Entertainment outlet TMZ reported that Hochman made the decision in part out of respect for the Reiners’ views on capital punishment — they had vocally opposed it on a number of occasions — and in part because Nick’s siblings, Romy and Jake Reiner, might find it difficult to participate in a trial that could end with their brother being put to death.
Rob Reiner, an outspoken liberal, had nothing but kind words for Erika Kirk after she publicly forgave Tyler Robinson — the man charged with the assassination of her late husband, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Nick Reiner’s siblings have opted not to be involved in their brother’s defense, and he has struggled to mount a consistent defense in part because he has been unable to access money from his trust. Reiner and his attorneys have claimed he was entitled to half of the $1.5 million trust when he turned 30 in 2023, but it did not happen.
The death penalty was on the table in the immediate aftermath of the killings because, as Hochman stated at an early press conference, the initial charges of first-degree murder had added special circumstance enhancements — lying in wait and multiple murders — which elevated the crime to make it eligible for either the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole.
According to the indictment, the crimes “involved great violence, great bodily harm, threat of great bodily harm, or other acts disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness.”
The Reiners were found stabbed to death at their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025. Their daughter Romy was the first to discover the bodies.
“This was a profound betrayal by someone who was loved and trusted by the very people he is accused of killing,” Hochman said.
Nick Reiner, who had a long history of drug addiction and mental illness, was apprehended a short time later and charged with the murders.
California state law also lists killing for financial gain, killing a police officer or public official, or a killing that involved torture as additional special circumstance designations that could also invoke the death penalty as a consideration.
Although a number of death penalty cases have been tried in California in the last two decades, the state has not executed a death-row inmate since 2006.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2019 executive order also currently halts executions statewide, meaning even a death sentence would not have resulted in Reiner’s execution unless a future governor reversed the moratorium.
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