Eric Menendez refused parole by the California Board of Directors
The California Parole Board said Eric Menendez had raised public safety risks and denied the parole plea.
Like his former brother Eric, the California parole board refused to give it to Lyle Menendez’s freedom.
With a string of decisions that came days after the 36th anniversary of his parents’ infamous shooting deaths, the Menendez brothers lost their chance of freedom on contraband, mainly used behind bars.
“The panel discovered there are still signs today,” said Lyle Menendez poses a risk to the public, the California Parole Board announced on Friday, August 22, after a one-day hearing.
Before the board’s decision, Lyle spoke about physical and sexual abuse with both the hands of his parents, but was held responsible “for all this pain.”
“My mother and father didn’t have to die that day,” said Lyle, 57, of the shotgun murder on August 20, 1989. “I’m deeply sorry about who I was… about the harm that everyone has endured.”
Parole Committee member Julie Garland said in an announcement of his parole denial that the board believes Lyle Menendez is sorry for the murder of his parents. However, she said he still shows signs of antisocial behavior.
“We think your regrets are real. In many ways, you look like a model prisoner. You are a model prisoner in many ways, demonstrating the possibility of change. But despite all those outwardly positive things, we still see… you still suffer from anti-social personality traits like rejection, minimization, and rule breaking that are beneath that positive surface.”
She said “incarcerated people who break rules” are more likely to break society’s rules.
Ultimately, she said Lyle Menendez needs to be someone who shows he is running the program for other inmates. Authorities said Lyle Menendez had set up a green space glorification project aimed at coaching other prisoners behind the bar and turning prison yards into a more regularized park-like environment.
“There’s no way you don’t have hope… this denial…it’s not the end. It’s a way you spend your time practicing what you preach about who you are and who you want to be,” Garland says. “Please don’t be someone else behind a closed room.”
She says he will consider considering a management review within a year and will be able to move to a hearing soon in 18 months.
This is what you need to know about a parole hearing and when the Menendez brothers get another chance to leave prison.
Mobile phones use keys in failed parole attempts
While that may seem like a small problem, Vice-Chair Patrick Reardon cited the repeated use of Lyle Menendez’s smuggling cell phones over the years, including when he shared a dorm with five other inmates.
Reardon told Menendez that he did not use the cell phone that the inmates shared for criminal activity, but he was able to use it to order murder, move drugs to prisons and coordinate attacks on officers.
When asked why he felt he needed a cell phone while having an approved tablet to communicate with his family, Lyle said the prison guard who monitored his communications for security sold it to the tabloid.
“I felt that the phone was… a way to protect my privacy,” said Lyle, who effectively emerged from the San Diego prison where he was in prison.
His lawyer, Heidi Rammell, expressed his dissatisfaction that the hearing did not further focus on Lyle Menendez’s good behavior.
“How many people have been attacked, bullied, chosen to do something different, yet still have a sentence (without parole) before this board with zero violence?” she said. “We didn’t spend any time talking about hundreds, if not thousands of things.
Brother Eric denied a day ago
The board determined on August 21 that 54-year-old Eric Menendez was not eligible for parole after a nearly 10-hour hearing to determine whether it posed a threat to the public if released from prison. The Menendez brothers were newly eligible for parole when they resented in prison for 50 years under California’s Youthful Criminal Act. The brothers were 18 and 21 at the time of the murder.
Commissioner Robert Burton of California’s Parole Hearing Committee said Eric Menendez continued to pose “an unreasonable risk to public safety.”
“Contrary to the beliefs of your supporters, you weren’t a model prisoner, and frankly, we feel a little disturbing,” Burton told Eric Menendez.
Lyle Menendez, 57, effectively appears at a hearing of his own parole from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where he is in jail. His hearing is scheduled to begin at 8:30am local time.
The Menendez brothers were convicted of the horrifying shotgun murder of their wealthy parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. A new wave of public support and a long legal battle led to their responsibilities in May. They have served their first sentence in prison for about 35 years without the possibility of parole.
The Parole Board will consider factors such as criminal history, behavior while in prison, and how inmates have changed since they went to prison. If Lyle Menendez is released on parole, it does not mean immediate freedom. The decision to make a parole hearing will be reviewed by its lead attorney, according to the California Department of Amendments and Rehabilitation. Governor Gavin Newsom then gained final say, and according to state law, there is a month for that.
The board criticized Eric Menendez for violating the rules while in prison
Eric Menendez was denied parole for three years, the minimum period of reconsideration that the board could grant. He can ask the board to consider the decision of the error in the fact that if amended, it will change the outcome. He could also mean “a petition to move forward.” That is, if the situation or information refers to parole suitability, he can appear before the board earlier.
Burton said parole was denied because Eric Menendez’s prison records were “full” with violations of rules such as “violence, manipulation, misuse of things… you have a criminal act.”
During the hearing, Eric Menendez wrote a personal letter to the work equipment before admitting the violation, from possessing contraband supplies and physically fighting other prisoners to help prison gangs with tax rules.
The panel asked him about his mental state leading to the murder of his parents, particularly why he decided to kill his mother.
“The way and motivations for killing are weighted to the worsening,” Burton said. “The murder of your mother has shown a lack of empathy and reason in particular.”
What happened in the Menendez Brothers Murder?
Eric and Lyle Menendez were convicted in 1996 for the murder of wealthy parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. His parents were shot dead at their Beverly Hills home on the evening of August 20, 1989.
The conviction came during a retrial after the first murder trial ended in an undecided ju trial. To secure a second conviction, the brother’s lawyers allegedly excluded substantial evidence of alleged abuse that the brother suffered at the hands of his parents’ hands, which he had been excluded from retrial.
At the first trial, both Menendez brothers testified that their father had physically sexually abused them while their mother was emotionally abusing them. Their defense attorney claims that the young man – Lyle is 21 years old and Eric is 18 at the time of the murder, killing his parents in self-defense, believing that they would kill them to stop talking about the abuse.
The prosecutors portrayed the brothers as cold-blooded murderers motivated by their parents’ huge fortunes, and pointed out that after the two joined in after the murder, they denied their involvement and spent what suggests that it could be a mob hit.
Contributions: N’Dea Yancey Bragg and James Powel, USA Today
