The California Board of Parole Hearings will not recommend Erik Menendez be set free for at least three years. Lyle’s hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Erik Menendez should not be granted parole 36 years after murdering his parents, the California Board of Parole Hearings has decided.
The decision to deny Menendez, 54, parole eligibility for three years came after a 10-hour hearing conducted over video conference on Thursday.
It was a crushing defeat for Menendez after a long, winding legal battle in which his attorneys and family members had insisted he had been rehabilitated after more than three decades behind bars since the 1989 shotgun slayings of his parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Lyle Menendez, 57, will have his own parole hearing on Friday; he may win the board’s recommendation for parole where his brother failed.
If the board decides to recommend Lyle for parole, it will have 120 days to conduct a legal review before submitting the recommendation to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have 30 days to affirm or deny it.
As for Erik, not all hope is lost: Newsom could still grant him clemency despite the Board’s lack of a recommendation. Defense attorneys for the brothers argued that years of sexual abuse by their father, with the abetment of their mother, led the pair to purchase shotguns and kill Jose and Kitty Menendez execution-style in the living room of their lavish Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
