Like his brother, Erik, just 24 hours earlier, Lyle Menendez’s request for parole was denied Friday evening by a California Parole Board panel.
While the decision isn’t final yet — it won’t become official until the CPB review process is finalized, including a separate hearing where the panel will explain their reasoning for denying parole — only rarely does the larger Parole Board overrule a rejection. And while California Gov. Gavin Newsom has the power to make the final call, he has already indicated he will likely follow whatever CPB recommends.
As such, it puts an end, for now at least, to the Menendez Brothers’ quest to be released from prison, where they are currently serving 50 years to life for the 1989 murder of their parents. However, now 54 and 57 respectively, the brothers’ efforts to secure release from prison isn’t over. Both of them are petitioning the state for clemency and are separately seeking new trials.
As on Thursday, Friday’s hearing was held virtually from San Diego’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
The Menendez brothers murdered their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, on Aug. 20, 1989 when Erik was 18 and Lyle was 21. They have been imprisoned since their arrest a few months later in 1990.
After a lengthy legal battle — their first court case infamously ended with a mistrial — the brothers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996.
But in years after their conviction, they became an unlikely cause célèbre. After a decades long campaign for their release, they became eligible for parole in May of 2025, when a Los Angeles judge reduced their sentences to 50 years to life. The reason given that they were younger than 26 when the crimes occurred, which according to local law makes them eligible.
But being eligible for parole and actually receiving it are very different matters, as both brothers learned this week.
