Duo is among the detainees with the highest media visibility in the United States
A judicial commission denied Joseph Lyle on Friday (22), a day after his brother Erik also received the order to remain in prison for the murder of his parents for over three decades in one of the most well-known crimes in the country’s history.
Lyle, 57, was denying parole because he could not convince the panel that he no longer represents a public threat.
Julie Garland, a member of the Case Freedom Board who revised the case, considered that Lyle still poses a risk to the community, but encouraged him not to lose hope because the negative “is not the end.” Brothers may request a reevaluation of their cases in three years.
“My mother and father had not to die that day,” said an emotional Lyle to the board, explaining that the decision to kill his parents was exclusively his and not the responsibility of his brother. “I’m sorry for everyone, and I will regret forever,” he added in his final comments.
The result of the audience is the last blow to a movement on the Internet that required the liberation of the brothers and in recent years has grown with the support of their families and even celebrities like Kim Kardashian.
With a first life of life imprisonment without the possibility of reducing the penalty for killing their parents with rifles in their luxurious mansion in, the Menéndez brothers are among the detainees with the greatest media visibility in the.
His trial in the 1990s was one of the most watched on American television, and his story returned to the spotlight with the successful Netflix series “Monsters: The story of Lyle and Erik Menéndez.”
Both won an important judicial victory in May, when the American court relieved the terms of its sentence. This gave them the right to request parole if they showed repentance and if they did not represent a danger to society.
11 hour audience
Friday’s audience took place just over 36 years after the murder of José and Kitty Menéndez, in which prosecutors claimed to be a cynical attempt by their children to obtain family fortune.
Erik and Lyle fired five times against their father Jose Menéndez with shotguns. His mother, Kitty, died with a shot while trying to flee.
Initially, they sought to forge an alibi and attributed brutal homicide to the mafia. But Erik, at the time at the age of 18, confessed to homicides in a session with his therapist. The brothers claimed to have acted in self -defense after years of emotional and sexual abuse by a tyrannical father.
Friday’s hearing, closed to the public and held for a video conferencing of the prison where the brothers are detained in San Diego (California), lasted 11 hours and was taken separately from his 54-year-old brother Erik’s Thursday session.
Members of the Judicial Commission questioned Lyle’s actions and indicated that he violated the rules of prison with the use of cell phones. They also stated that there is a psychological assessment that describes it as a manipulator who refuses to accept the consequences of his actions. “You seem to adopt different faces at different times,” said Patrick Reardon, one of the panel members.
Conditional freedom hearings were possible after a judge sentenced them again this year, reducing their original punishment from life imprisonment to a 50 -year -old.
*With information from AFP
Posted by Nátaly Tenório
