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The man who gunned down former Beatle John Lennon in New York 31 years ago has again been denied parole.
Officials from the New York State Department of Corrections have announced that Mark Chapman, now 57, must stay in prison.
It was the seventh time Chapman had gone before a parole hearing in an attempt to be released.
Chapman shot Lennon in December 1980 outside the Manhattan apartment building where the musician lived.
The following year he received a sentence of 20 years to life after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
Chapman has had such applications examined every two years since 2000.
After his hearing in 2010, the three-member parole panel cited in writen comments to Chapman "the disregard you displayed for the norms of our society and the sanctity of human life" as their reasons for throwing out his bid to be freed.
One of those who opposed him being released at that time was Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, who said she believed Chapman posed a risk to her, Lennon's two sons, the public and himself.
In a 1992 interview Chapman told of the moment when Lennon got out of a limousine and approached Chapman, who asked him for an autograph.
Chapman said: "I heard this voice - not an audible voice, an inaudible voice - saying over and over, 'Do it, do it, do it'.
"I thought that by killing him I would acquire his fame."
Chapman is being kept in a maximum security facility.
