Erik and Lyle Menendez will get a chance at parole more than a year sooner than expected. The California parole board has advanced the brothers’ next suitability hearing to March 2027, moving it up from an August 2028 date that had been set after their previous hearing was denied.
The board granted the earlier date under a provision tied to Proposition 9, the 2008 constitutional amendment known as Marsy’s Law. That measure lets the parole board move up an inmate’s next hearing when new information or a change in circumstances suggests the person may now be suitable for release. Erik, 55, and Lyle, 58, both received the shortest denial period allowed under California law, three years, when the board turned them down in August 2025, and that shorter denial made them eligible for the earlier administrative review now scheduled for next spring.
Why they were denied in the first place
At the August 2025 hearing, commissioners cited conduct problems behind bars, including possession of contraband cellphones, in ruling that the brothers were not yet suitable for parole. Their family had pushed back on that characterization, pointing to the hospice and inmate support programs both men have helped run at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where they have been housed since 2018.
A sentence that now allows for release
Erik and Lyle were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at the family’s Beverly Hills home in August 1989, a case that became one of the most heavily covered criminal trials of the era. Both received sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. That changed in May 2025, when a Los Angeles judge resentenced them to 50 years to life, a term that made them immediately eligible to seek parole after more than three decades in custody.
Resentencing did not guarantee release. It simply opened the door to parole hearings, the first of which came in August 2025 and ended in denial. The March 2027 date now gives the brothers another opportunity roughly a year and a half sooner than the standard three-year cycle would have allowed.
What the family is saying
In a statement following news of the advanced date, the Menendez family said they are proud of who the brothers have become and grateful to the parole board for recognizing their efforts and moving up the hearing. The family has consistently argued that decades of documented remorse, coursework, and rehabilitative programming inside the prison should weigh in the brothers’ favor.
The March 2027 hearing will not be a formality. Parole commissioners will weigh the same factors that led to last year’s denial, including institutional behavior since then, alongside the brothers’ age, health, and the extensive record built during more than 35 years in custody. Prosecutors and members of the extended Menendez family have been divided for years over whether release is warranted, and that division is expected to resurface as the new date approaches.
Sources: ABC News · NBC Los Angeles · Los Angeles Magazine
