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The ruling Monday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C.
Ryan comes just weeks after the brothers were denied parole.
Ryan denied a May 2023 petition seeking a review of their
convictions based on new evidence supporting their claims of
sexual abuse by their father.
The judge wrote that the new evidence that “slightly
corroborates” the allegations that the brothers were sexually
abused does not negate the fact that the pair acted with
"premeditation and deliberation" when they carried out the
killings.
“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 supportive of an imperfect self-defense instruction,”
the judge wrote.
An email was sent to Mark Geragos, a lawyer for the brothers,
seeking comment on the judge's ruling.
A panel of two commissioners on Aug. 22 denied Lyle Menendez
parole for three years after a daylong hearing. Commissioners
noted the older brother still displayed "anti-social personality
traits like deception, minimization and rule-breaking that lie
beneath that positive surface.”
Erik Menendez, who is being held at the same prison in San
Diego, was similarly denied parole a day earlier after
commissioners determined that his misbehavior in prison made him
still a risk to public safety.
The brothers were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for
fatally shooting their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Kitty
Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion almost exactly 36 years
ago on Aug. 20, 1989. While defense attorneys argued that the
brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse
by their father, prosecutors said the brothers sought a
multimillion-dollar inheritance.
A judge reduced their sentences in May, and they became
immediately eligible for parole. The parole hearings marked the
closest they have come to winning freedom since their
convictions almost 30 years ago.
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