Convicted shotgun killers Erik and Lyle Menendez are set to face a parole board more than a year earlier than expected, state officials confirmed. The brothers, who were granted a tentatively scheduled March 2027 hearing, expressed gratitude through family members after learning the California Board of Parole Hearings had moved their August 2028 eligibility date up. Officials cited provisions under Proposition 9, a 2008 state constitutional amendment, which allows early hearings if new information or changed circumstances suggest an inmate may be suitable for release.
Erik Menendez, 55, and Lyle Menendez, 58, were convicted in 1996 for the Aug. 20, 1989, slayings of their parents, Jose and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menendez, inside the family's Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers maintained they killed their parents out of fear after enduring years of emotional, physical and alleged sexual abuse by their father. Originally handed life sentences without parole, the pair were resentenced in May 2025 to 50 years to life.
The new sentence made them immediately eligible for parole consideration under California law because both were under age 26 at the time of the murders. In a statement released Monday, the family praised the board's decision, pointing to the brothers' prison rehabilitation work—including founding a hospice program and a beautification initiative called Green Space—and citing the declining health of aging relatives. "We will always be profoundly grateful that they have been resentenced and that our family can now imagine a future in which they are once again part of our everyday lives," the family said.
Both men remain incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
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