LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Lyle Menendez, imprisoned 35 years with his brother Erik for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents at their Beverly Hills home, was denied parole on Friday, a day after the same decision was rendered against his younger sibling.
The ruling was announced by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the parent agency of the state Board of Parole Hearings, at the end of an 11-hour-plus proceeding.
Parole commissioners assigned to the case concluded there were still signs that Lyle Menendez, 57, would pose a risk to the public if released from custody, according to details of the hearing provided to news outlets, including Reuters, through a media pool reporter.
Menendez, dressed in blue prison garb, appeared by video from a San Diego lockup where he is incarcerated.
His younger brother, Erik Menendez, 54, was denied parole following a similar 10-hour session on Thursday. The two may apply for parole again within three years.
The brothers were convicted of first-degree murder in a trial three decades ago that drew intense national media attention.
They admitted fatally shooting their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, on August 20, 1989, with 12-gauge shotguns as the couple watched television in the family room of their home. But the siblings have maintained they acted in self-defense, fearing for their lives after years of sexual abuse by their father, a wealthy entertainment industry executive, and emotional abuse by their mother. The brothers were 21 and 18 at the time.
Prosecutors argued the killings were coldly calculated and motivated by greed, namely the brothers’ desire to inherit their parents’ multimillion-dollar fortune.
Explaining the reasoning behind Friday’s ruling, Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said the “callous” nature of the killings, as well as Lyle Menendez’ efforts to cover up his role in the crime afterward, remained factors in the denial.
In a tearful closing statement before the board’s decision, Menendez said he was “profoundly sorry for who I was … for the harm that everyone has endured.”
While his expressions of remorse appeared genuine, “you struggle with anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface,” Garland told Menendez at the end of the hearing.
The commissioners focused much of their attention during the proceedings on both brothers’ repeated use of contraband cellphones in violation of prison rules.
“Incarcerated people who break rules” are more likely to break rules in society,” Garland said.
Several close relatives spoke on the brothers’ behalf during the hearings in support of their release for the sake of family healing.
The two have been held in custody since March 1990 and were originally sentenced in July 1996 to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Their sentences were reduced in May of this year to 50 years to life under California’s youthful offender statute, which applies to defendants who were under 26 when they committed a crime, making them eligible for parole once they have served half of their term.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and William Mallard)
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