Erik and Lyle Menendez have lost their bid for a new trial.
A month after the brothers were denied parole at back-to-back suitability hearings where they recounted their 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ruled they do not qualify for a new trial based on claims of new evidence.
In his new 16-page ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Ryan rejected the brothers’ habeas petition filed in 2023. Judge Ryan found that the alleged new evidence was not “strong” enough to have changed the outcome of the brothers’ 1996 jury trial, where they were convicted of first-degree murder for killing José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez inside the family’s Beverly Hills home.
“The purported new evidence that slightly corroborates that petitioners were sexually abused does not negate the finding of premeditation and deliberation and the lying in wait special circumstance,” Judge Ryan ruled. “The evidence alleged here is not so compelling that it would have produced a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror or [supported] an imperfect self-defense instruction.”
The quest for the new trial was a parallel track the brothers were pursuing in their ongoing bid to win release from their San Diego prison. The brothers say the brutal murders, which involved the reloading of a weapon before Kitty was fatally shot in the face at point-blank range, were committed after they suffered years of abuse, including sexual abuse by José.
The new ruling does not affect the brothers’ ability to continue seeking parole in the coming years. Lawyers and representatives for the brothers and their highly supportive relatives did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s requests for comment.
The alleged new evidence in the failed habeas petition included a letter that Erik wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the shooting deaths, when Erik was 17. In the letter excerpted in the petition, Erik described being abused by his father and how fearful he was. “It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now,” Erik wrote. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in. … He’s warned me 100 times about telling anyone.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
The other new evidence in the petition centered on claims by Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, that José Menendez sexually molested him, too. The claims were revealed in the 2023 Peacock docuseries, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.
“Neither piece of newly discovered evidence is particularly strong,” Judge Ryan wrote in his ruling. He said the Cano letter “only corroborates” the trial testimony from Erik and Cano in which the men said they had discussed José’s alleged abuse. “As for the Rossello declaration, it corroborates the general allegation that José was sexually abusive of boys and young men, but [it] is not relevant to the petitioners’ state of mind at the time of the murders. Neither piece of evidence adds to the allegations of abuse that the jury already considered,” Judge Ryan wrote.
“What is more, the introduction of either of these two pieces of evidence would not have resulted in the trial court giving an imperfect self-defense instruction because neither demonstrates the brothers experienced a fear of imminent peril,” the judge said.
The brothers still have a third potential path to freedom in their long-shot request for clemency submitted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a July episode of his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom, the governor said he planned to make a decision this month. He told his guest, Ryan Murphy, creator of the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, that he refrained from watching the show because he didn’t want to be “persuaded” by anything “not in the files.” With the parole board’s ruling that the brothers are not yet fully rehabilitated, the still-pending bid for clemency appears unlikely to succeed, at least for now.
Erik and Lyle were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1996, but a judge resentenced them to 50 years to life in May after they gave stunning court statements voicing their regret. Several relatives, including the sisters of both José and Kitty, testified that the brothers had been abused and deserved mercy. The resentencing made them immediately eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law. The brothers apologized again during testimony before their separate parole board commissioners last month.
“I wish to God I did not do that,” Erik testified during his hearing on Aug. 21. “I cannot express sorrow and remorse enough. Doing it for the rest of my life will not be enough.” Erik’s panel denied his release first, saying he still posed a risk to society. The denial was for the minimum term of three years.
“My Mom and Dad did not have to die that day,” Lyle said through tears at his hearing on Aug. 22. “I’m profoundly sorry for who I was … for the harm that everyone has endured.” Lyle said he had an “honest belief” at the time of the double murder that his parents “were going to kill” him. He now understands they were unarmed, not posing an immediate threat, he testified. “Really, the only thought in my head was, it was happening now. I needed to get to the door first. Fear overwhelmed reason,” he said. “I don’t have a great explanation for why I felt such terror in those moments.”
At one point during his lengthy hearing, Lyle doubled over, crying and shaking, recalling a confrontation with Kitty shortly before the homicides. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that she knew,” he said, referring to the alleged sexual abuse Lyle and Erik suffered at the hands of their father.
As she denied Lyle’s release, a parole board commissioner said Lyle’s violence was impulsive and showed “poor threat perception.” She called the reloading and final shot that killed Kitty extremely “callous.”
The initial parole hearings for Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, gave the first detailed look at the brothers’ disciplinary records behind bars. Both had numerous violations for using contraband cell phones, with Lyle having pleaded guilty to two such violations in November 2024 and March 2025, Deputy Parole Commissioner Patrick Reardon said. While both brothers told officials that they rationalized the use as not harming anyone, the commissioners pointed out that demand for and use of the devices corrupted and endangered prison staff, fellow inmates, and others. Lyle conceded he couldn’t be sure his cellmates weren’t using his phone for criminal activity.
After the double denial, the brothers’ cousin, Anamaria Baralt, said the news was “intensely disappointing,” but the family was not deterred. She said while the rulings officially push Erik and Lyle’s next hearings out several years, they’ll get automatic reviews after one year. If they’re “infraction-free,” they could potentially cut that waiting period in half, she said.
“Overall, it was a pretty disappointing week for us, but this isn’t a long time,” she said in an Aug. 22 Instagram post. “They are going to get out. I do want to always remind people that a couple of years ago, this wasn’t even a possibility, right? They were LWOP. They were life without parole. So, the fact that we are making progress and we had these hearings … There is still light at the end of the tunnel.”
From Rolling Stone US
