I say under very tight and long-lasting supervision, that release (if they are truly deemed as not a threat to society) would be acceptable to me. I feel their circumstances were extenuating and that they’ve paid their debt.
What was extenuating about their circumstances?
Possibility /= Probability. I buy a lotto ticket realizing it is possible that I will become a multimillionaire, but I do not begin shopping for mansions. So, lets say at a parole board hearing, the survivors all beg for her release and the Pope shows up as well to argue on her behalf. Sure, parole is possible.
You seem to imply that if someone is given the possibility of parole, they should eventually get it.
None of these people deserve anything except what they’ve been given. They’ve certainly earned it.
Whether or not they pose a real danger is kind of a moot point, actually. Preventing a danger to society in general is only one part of what incarceration of lawbreakers is intended to accomplish.
I posit that in cases such as this one - where the sentance is effectively life imprisonment (either because the death penalty has been or will be applied or because parole is not an option) - one of the main purposes of the incarceration of such a person is to serve as an example that life imprisonment is a realistic consequence of certain behaviors.
Ideally, society wants to encourage people to consider the ramifications of their actions before they carry through with them. Having certain crimes for which rehabilitation (and therefore subsequent release) is not an option provides at least one avenue of encouragement for people to think of the consequences before they commit certain illegal acts.
Having people think “Oy, spending the rest of my life in prison would really suck! Maybe I oughtn’t participate in the brutal slaying of multiple people” before they actually participate in the brutal slaying is infinitely preferable to having them think “Man, prison sucks! Maybe I shouldn’t have killed those people after all.” after the fact, when it’s been conclusively demonstrated to them via incarceration that prison sucks.
[Let me add my disclaimer right up front, in the case that this might end up as some sort of debate… I have to leave to go out of town this evening and won’t be back for over a week. So if at some point I’m not around to answer replies, that’s where I’ve gone.]
I feel their age is relevant. Although I agree that 20 is an adult, I’ve known many people that are mentally far from that at much later ages in life. I think that their backstories (just as an example, using Susan Atkins and her mother’s death from cancer and father’s subsequent abandoning) played a huge part in their poor decision making.
Yes, I realize most folks typically overcome a lot worse than that to do much less horrendous things than they did, but I also understand that easily many have such sorry foundations to work with that it sets them apart from the rest of society. I think these people fell under that guise.
Further, I believe drugs didn’t help matters and finally, I see Manson much the way I do a pedophile that grooms children. He knew what he was looking for and what he set out to do and I don’t think they were much of a match for his agenda, charisma and savvy.
And that’s just to name a few ideas off the top of my head. I think there are other contributors as well.
No, no, no.
Suppose a boss tells the employee that there’s a possibility of promotion in six months. The employee is eager to earn it and asks the boss what kind of things he’s looking for.
Maybe the boss gives a list. 1) Increase sales by 10%. 2) Start 10 new accounts. 3) Give at least one Saturday morning per month in the office.
So the employee does all the things the boss lists. Then can the boss say, six months later, “Sorry, we changed our mind…we decided not to have any promotions.”?
Saying that there’s a possibility of parole means that if certain requirements are satisfied, the person can have parole. So with regard to the Manson family, 1) what are those things, and 2) have they or have they not fulfilled them?
As in the Susan Atkins thread, I think people are hung up about the awful nature of their crimes, which I understand: however, if a jury gave them the possibility of parole, then presumably there are things they CAN do to earn parole. We’re not supposed to say, “Oh, we changed our minds…you did everything we asked, but no parole (promotion) for you!”
I was in (1)a 13-year-old relationship with an abusive biker/sociopath who told me I’d better conform to his idea of a wonder parent, or he’d kill me; followed by five years of relationship with a Manson-wannabe. My suggestion for these women is this: don’t let them off the hook, now matter how tempting.
Instead, use them, train them (w/in limits) to help other women who’ve been in the same situations. Then they can help repay their debts to society. There might be a way to pay for a program like this through state funding. Can’t hurt.
Love, Phil
Nathan F. Leopold (of Leopold & Loeb infamy) was released after 33 years for killing a minor in cold blood. Financially comfortable from an inheritance, he moved to Puerto Rico with his wife and lived his last 13 years low-key.
I do not disagree with you. Not one bit.
But I’m not so sure that the Manson women were carefully weighing the pros and cons of their actions at the time. You’re describing a sort of logic that they were probably incapable of using at the time.
I don’t mean to excuse their actions, which were certainly horrific. But they were young, confused, drugged up, and under the spell of a master manipulator. I’m willing to cut them a tiny (VERY tiny) bit of slack for that.
I have argued in the past, and continue to believe, that these three women shouldn’t be shut away from society’s gaze, but rather placed front and center as examples of what life in prison really means. They should be made to tell teen-agers and pre-teens over and over and over again about how they wasted their lives, about how it feels at the age of nearly 60 to realize that you’ll never know the simple pleasures of mothering (assuming most women who have children find some pleasure in it) of making one’s own home, of becoming something and making a difference in the world, of watching children grow up, get married, move away and make one proud of them. No grandchildren, no lovers, no husbands to hold them when their parents die, no funerals to attend, no friends to go to dinner with, no world whatsoever outside the concrete walls, steel doors and chain link fences of a prison.
I don’t know if it would make any difference. But it it did any good at all, the cost of keeping them alive might be slightly less a complete waste.
It’s been tried, and a quick googling got some hits that suggested that the so-called “scared straight” programs actually do more harm than good.
Sadly.
The jury didn’t give them the possibility of parole, though. The jury sentenced them to die. Their sentences were commuted to life in prison after a decision of the California Supreme Court invalidiated all death sentences in that state.
Yep. It happens all the time.
Sadly.
@pravnik: touché, I forgot about the reversal. Still, it was a court decision to allow the possibility.
@tdn: your company may screw you, but your govt isn’t supposed to. And I don’t think I went quite far enough…what if the company were just bullshitting you, knew full well they weren’t going to promote you etc.? The court isn’t supposed to make hollow promises.
Or maybe in this case the possibility of parole simply means that while the courts will not or cannot be bound to define conditions that, if met, might warrant the granting of parole, they do acknowledge that release from incarceration is not a categorical impossibility.
The day a multimillionaire lotto ticket argues for the release of the Manson Family women and agrees to pay their living expenses for the rest of their lives, with the balance of the winnings going to the victims surviving family members after the death of the women is the day I will vote for their release.
IIRC, at the time of the trial there were two possible sentences: death or life in prison with the possibility of parole. Life without the possibility of parole was not an option in California at that time. The jury chose the death penalty.
A few years later, the California Supreme Court disallowed the death penalty and commuted all prisoners on death row to life in prison with the possibility of parole, because that was the only other option. It wasn’t until a few years after that they introduced life without the possibility of parole as a sentence.
I remember this because at the time I remember my parents saying that that they should have introduced life without the possibility of parole as a sentence before they overturned the death penalty. My parents weren’t happy with the death penalty being overturned (they were and still are pro-death penalty), but what really irritated them was the fact that death row prisoners – the worst of the worst – would not only escape their sentences, but would be actually be eligible for parole. Which was surely not the intention of the juries which sentenced them – those juries certainly meant that the death row prisoners should never be free this side of the grave.
Susan Atkins had a son (Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz- not making it up) who was placed in foster care and the records later sealed. Do Van Houten or Krenwinkel have children?