Menendez brother loses bid for release three decades after murder
(NYT) — Erik Menendez should stay in prison, California parole commissioners said Thursday, dealing a major blow to his efforts to win release more than three decades after he and his brother, Lyle, murdered their parents in a Beverly Hills mansion. Lyle Menendez will get his own chance at parole Friday.
The case became a national obsession in the 1990s, and again in recent years after documentaries shined a closer light on the parental abuse suffered by the brothers, leading to calls for their release. They still have other potential paths to freedom, although parole was the most straightforward option.
The board said Erik Menendez could try again for parole in three years, though he can petition to come before the board again in as soon as 18 months.
Appearing from prison on video, Erik Menendez, 54, faced hours of questioning from the two parole board commissioners who made a decision on his case, dating back to his first brush with the law when he committed burglary as a teen.
Robert Barton, the parole commissioner, told Menendez in announcing his decision that the killing of his mother showed a lack of empathy and reason. Barton said Erik Menendez was not in imminent fear of his life before the murders, directly refuting the claim he and his brother have repeatedly made that they killed because they feared their parents would kill them first. Barton also said he believed there was a financial motivation for the crime.
The parole hearing Thursday came almost 36 years to the day after the Menendez brothers marched into their living room with shotguns on Aug. 20, 1989, and opened fire on their parents. The case transfixed the country for its lurid violence against a backdrop of wealth and privilege in one of the country’s most exclusive enclaves.
The brothers were tried together, but judged by separate juries, each of which deadlocked. It was one of the first trials televised to a national audience, foreshadowing the country’s obsession with the O.J. Simpson trial a year later. The brothers were convicted after a retrial, which was not televised.
US weekly jobless claims rise to highest since June
(Reuters) — The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits rose by the most in about three months last weekin an initial signal that layoffs may be picking up and adding to signs the labor market is weakening.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits climbed 11,000 — the largest increase since late May — to a seasonally adjusted 235,000 for the week ended August 16, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week. The labor market had split into low firings and tepid hiring as businesses navigate President Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policy, which has raised the nation’s average import duty to its highest in a century.
Employment gains averaged 35,000 jobs per month over the last three months, the government reported in early August. Domestic demand grew in the second quarter at its slowest pace since the fourth quarter of 2022. The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, rose 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.972 million — the highest since November 2021 — during theweek ending August 9, the claims report showed.
The elevated so-called continuing claims align with consumers’ rising perceptions that jobs are hard to find.