PASADENA : Rapist Fails Psychiatric Exam, Won’t Be Paroled

Rapist Carnot Andrew Lyles, whose pending parole created a storm of protest in Pasadena, has failed a psychiatric exam and will not be released from state prison as scheduled, state corrections officials said Friday.

Lyles, 38, took the exam Thursday. He is the seventh sex offender in Southern California since March to fail the last-minute test, which corrections officials administer to dangerous felons whose parole otherwise cannot be denied. Under the state’s 1977 determinate sentencing law, prisoners are released on set dates rather than going before a parole board.

State corrections officials had said that Lyles would be paroled somewhere in south Los Angeles County, but a final decision had not been made, said Department of Corrections spokesman Tip Kindel. Lyles had requested parole in Pasadena, where his ailing father lives. But that was blocked when six women who said they were his victims protested. Under state law, felons cannot be released within 35 miles of the residence of victims who register protests.

The Board of Prison Terms will hold a hearing within 30 days to decide whether Lyles should have his parole revoked and be kept in prison for up to a year of psychiatric treatment. The hearings are generally formalities that confirm the decision to revoke parole.

In 1990, Lyles was convicted of committing a sex act with a 9-year-old girl in Pasadena. Lyles, who is being held at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, was also convicted of raping and sodomizing a Pasadena woman in 1978.