OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:03 AM – Saturday, August 23, 2025
California’s parole board denied Lyle Menendez parole on Friday, marking his first appearance before the board.
The decision came just a day after his brother, Erik, was denied parole by the same board. The brothers are eligible to reappear before the parole board in three years.
The board evaluated the brothers separately, with Lyle Menendez participating via video conference from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
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“The panel has found today that there are still signs that Lyle poses a risk to the public,” Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said.
“We find your remorse is genuine,” she added. “In many ways, you look like you’ve been a model inmate. You have been a model inmate in many ways, who has demonstrated the potential for change. But despite all those outward positives, we see … you still struggle with anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
Garland did give the brothers some reassuring words, however.
“Don’t ever not have hope … this denial is not … it’s not the end,” she said. “It’s a way for you to spend some time to demonstrate, to practice what you preach about who you are, who you want to be.”
The board also cited his history of breaking rules and using a cellphone in prison.
“You seem to be different things at different times,” Deputy Parole Commissioner Patrick Reardon said.
Ethan Milius, a Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney, said that Lyle Menendez showed no growth.
“When he commits a violation, he lies about it and tries to avoid responsibility,” Milius state.
During Thursday’s parole board hearing, Erik Menendez had also been denied parole.
Commissioner Robert Barton emphasized the severity of Erik’s actions and prison conduct, including his involvement in a prison gang tax scheme.
“I believe in redemption or I wouldn’t be doing this job … but based on the legal standards, we find that you continue to pose an unreasonable risk to public safety,” said Barton.
He added that while the family’s forgiveness was “amazing,” forgiveness and parole eligibility were separate matters: “Two things can be true. They can love and forgive you and you can still be found unsuitable for parole.”
The California Board of Parole Hearings did not recommend Lyle Menendez for parole, leaving him incarcerated. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) will have 30 days to approve, reverse, or take no action on the board’s decision.
If the governor chooses not to act, the parole board’s decision will stand. Newsom explained the process of considering the Menendez brothers’ eligibility for release in a press conference on Wednesday, May 14th.
Before finalizing a decision, a team of forensic psychologists conducted individualized risk assessments on each brother.
“We thought that would be prudent to do,” he said, stressing that those assessments have been “debated” not only by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and the victim’s family, but also by the judge, both publicly in another conversation, some of it behind closed doors.”
The two brothers have already admitted to killing their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez. Nonetheless, they claimed at the time that it was done in “self-defense” after years of sexual abuse.
“I killed my mom and dad. I make no excuses and also no justification,” Lyle said in a statement to the court. “The impact of my violent actions on my family … is unfathomable.”
Prosecutors have argued that the pair should not be released, arguing that they had planned the shotgun killings to access their parents’ fortune.
The trial resurfaced in May 2023, when the brothers’ attorneys filed a Habeas Corpus petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court, requesting a fresh trial based on new evidence.
The evidence in question included a letter written by Erik eight months before the killings, and it mentions the purported ongoing molestation, as well as Roy Rosselló’s claims that the boys’ father, José, an entertainment executive at the time, drugged and raped him when he was a younger man in the 1980s.
Rosselló, who was part of the boy band “Menudo,” still maintains that he was raped by their father in the 1980s — seemingly corroborating the brothers’ arguments regarding the abuse.
By October 2024, the brothers obtained the support of then-Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, who formally urged that they be resentenced to 50 years to life, putting them immediately eligible for parole.
However, Gascón lost the November election to District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who later reversed his resentencing recommendation.
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