Late last week, the California parole board denied the freedom of two brothers — and the hopes of the 37,000 other Californians serving life or multidecade sentences behind bars.
After marathon hearings spanning 10 and 11 hours, respectively, the California Gov. Gavin Newsom-appointed parole board remained unpersuaded about Erik and Lyle Menendez’s rehabilitation after 35 years of incarceration. The board’s rationale included the brothers’ illicit cellphone use, Erik Menendez’s affiliation with a prison gang involved in tax fraud and, of course, the brutality of their original crime: the murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989.
It should have been an easy decision to grant the Menendez brothers parole.
With their freshly litigated youth offender status, staggering public and family support, long-term faith and family commitments while incarcerated, and with new evidence corroborating their claims that José Menendez was sexually abusive, it should have been an easy decision to grant the Menendez brothers parole.
Yet despite over a dozen relatives’ reading letters of support at the hearings (letters given weight as “victim impact statements” given the authors’ familial relationships to the deceased), the board declared Erik and Lyle still a “moderate risk to society.”
In response to the board’s concerns about their prison records, the brothers candidly outlined the isolation and daily fights for survival that informed their every move. The cellphones were to communicate with loved ones without intense public scrutiny, they attested, and the gang affiliation was to assure safety in a violent prison environment. The brothers also took accountability for the heinous nature of the underlying offense, situating it within the context of the violence they experienced within their household. Simply put, short of living three and a half decades without any mistakes or entanglements with prison survival culture at all, the Menendez brothers appeared in front of the board with attitudes and circumstances quite obviously favoring release.
Multidecade incarceration is a uniquely American phenomenon that haunts the underpinnings of our democracy. While the United States makes up about 4% of the world population, it holds an estimated 40% of the world’s life-sentenced population, including 83% of persons serving life without the possibility of parole (the initial sentence the Menendez brothers were serving before a May resentencing that put parole back on the table).
But the key question at the heart of the Menendez case in 2025 is not whether the brothers were model inmates or eliminated all possible doubt of re-offense — it is whether three and a half decades behind bars for anyone is just. The California parole board’s inability to see the “big picture” in the Menendez case raises major concerns about the future success of longtime incarcerated people seeking parole all over California, especially those who do not have a fraction of the mitigating circumstances that the Menendez brothers do. Especially those who are not white, wealthy and subjects of a popular Netflix series. And if you have violence on your prison record from trying to survive one of the most inherently violent places on Earth? Forget about it.
California is at the forefront of progressive ideology in many areas: Reproductive freedom. LGBTQ rights. Environmental justice. Yet the state continues to elude meaningful criminal legal progress. Granting the Menendez brothers parole was an opportunity for the Newsom administration to update its stance on draconian sentences, punitive logic and mass incarceration. It was an opportunity for our country’s most forward-thinking state to take a baby step toward defying prison sentences that other democracies, including much of Europe, have deemed unjust. It was an opportunity to redefine rehabilitation not as a “politician’s word” — to quote Morgan Freeman’s character, Redd, in “The Shawshank Redemption” — but as an ever-evolving journey rarely reflected by performance in prison. Ultimately, the Menendez parole hearing was an opportunity that the Newsom administration forfeited in favor of still waters and — just maybe — limiting the ammunition of MAGA political opponents currying old-guard “tough on crime” rhetoric and fearmongering tactics.
The key question at the heart of the Menendez case in 2025 is not whether the brothers were model inmates or eliminated all possible doubt of re-offense — it is whether three and a half decades behind bars for anyone is just.
There is still hope for the brothers. They will be eligible for parole again in three years and are exploring retrial and clemency options with their attorneys. But there are thousands of inmates across California and the United States whose pathway to freedom is all the more narrow because of what the Menendez parole decision represents about the pro-carceral status quo in even our bluest state. And to those without pathways to freedom (serving life without parole sentences), California has all but signified with this decision that even a unicorn resentencing opportunity will not unshackle you.
Although recidivism rates for homicide offenders are the lowest of any crime, our elected officials continue to lead with fear over compassion when it comes to prison “lifers.” The Menendez parole hearings were a missed opportunity not only to liberate two men who have served their time — but also for California to liberate itself from outdated notions of punishment and justice.