Oops. I see what you were saying now, especially in the context of the rest of your post. My apologies.
No need for apologies, headshok. 
As with all legal questions, YMMV depending on where you’re at. But a general rule is that you can be convicted as an accessory if you tell someone else to commit a crime and have the reasonable expectation that they will carry out your request.
So when Charlie Manson told Squeaky Frome and Tex Watson to go kill everyone they found inside the Labianca house, he was an accessory to those murders. When Tony Soprano told Pauly Walnuts to kill Big Pussy, he was an accessory to murder. But if your neighbor’s telling you about an argument he had with his boss and you say “If I was you, I’d kill the S.O.B.” and he shoots him the next day, you’ll probably get off by claiming you didn’t know your neighbor was nuts.
From the quotes page of the epilogue “A Shared Madness”
Folie a famille (within a large group) or folie a deux (within two people) is a psychiatric condition in which one person’s madness feeds off another’s madness. It’s also known as “shared paranoid disorder”
The crux of this is that Manson’s followers shared the same delusions that he did, and he was able to use this to control their behavior and to some degree, their thoughts.
It should be noted that since leaving the Manson fold, the three female defendants at the Tate-LaBianca trial have been doing very well, even by the standards of “normal” society. However, they will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison for acts committed while under the control of a madman.
And, FTR (and I don’t know if this was addressed), Roman Polanski is very much alive and still making movies.
Well, since this has turned into a psycho thread, consider this a hijack…
Bruno Hauptman didn’t kill the Lindburgh baby (although some people think so),
Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy (although some people think so),
and OJ didn’t kill Nicole and Ron (yeah, right).
I know, I know, you asked about jail. Well, the first two were killed and the last one should be.
Such is justice.
How come kids rarely get away with that “he/she made me do it” plea? If Susan Atkins had made that accusation of Charles Manson as a child - let’s say she had claimed that he made her throw a baseball through a church window - who would be more likely to get the blame? She would, undoubtedly. Although modern psychology has shifted the responsibility for behaviour away from the individual isn’t it right to say that the law is generally oriented towards this? Ignorance, for instance, is no excuse under the law. All the people who said Charles Manson made them do it (because of his Rasputin-like powers) had a vested interest in that being the case didn’t they? They were all criminals. It seems to me that acceptance of the claim that Charles Manson, Rasputin or anyone else has a grossly manipulative, hypnotic personality really does have to be an acceptance of the existence of the paranormal.
And, thedoorsrule1045, the thing is, if the United States wasn’t on Amnesty International’s hit list for having such a brutal penal system, I’d be less likely to care. Charles Manson, it seems, has spent most of the last 30 years in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, seven days a week. I think I’d find the thought of Death Row to be my only comfort if I lived like that.
And she did. She didn’t get away with anything. They all got death sentences, they were all commuted tolife, and their all still in jail and not likely to ever get out.
Anyway, if your eight year old threw a rock through a church window, and you found out your twelve year old told him to do it (his older brother who he looks up to and who is capable of manipulating him in entirly non-paranormal ways) wouldn’t you ground both of them?
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Apparently they didn’t think so. Susan Atkins, Patrica Krenwikel, and Leslie Van Horton all refused to say it was Charlie’s fault. And like I said, even though the jury believed he made them do it, they didn’t get any leinency out of it.
The only person who got anything out of it was Linda Kasabian, who avoided prosecution by testifying. Of course, since she didn’t kill anybody, it’s not unreasonable to think she could have gotten the same deal just implication the others.
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I disagree. It’s not a question of him having some kind of magic personality- although apparently he was very charismatic. Pretty much everybody in the court room said as much. What makes him guilt is the systimatic program he followed (powerful drugs, strange sex, emotional intimidation, fear, threats, violence) with the intention of convincing a buch of young vunerable girl that they had to do what he said when he said kill.
But if you don’t buy that (or buy that such a person is somebody society has a vested interest in protecting itself from,) he provided them with transportation. He gave them directions to the houses. He gave them a weapon. At Lablanc, he helped them get into the house. So he was a co-conspirator, and should get the same sentence as the rest of them.
There may be lots of things I disagree with in the US prison system, however, your data on Manson appears to be incorrect. He was transferred recently to a one of the new ‘supermax’ facilities, where his movements are severely restricted, but A. it was done in 1997, so he hasn’t spent 30 years in solitary 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, and B. it was done due to his conviction inside the prison for drug running.
When some one is already incarcerated and still commits crimes, there is little else to do than restrict their movements even more.
Here’s another example of the felony murder law from a real case in Tucson. Three teenagers, a brother and sister and one other boy, go into a gun shop and ask to look at a shotgun. One boy loads the gun and attempts to rob the store. Bad move. Store owner shoots the kid dead. The other boy is charged with felony murder though IIRC the prosecutors chose not to charge the girl the same way because of her age.
A similar case is that of the Montana brothers who murdered a man while robbing a house. The older brother, who did the shooting, was in a wheelchair, and the younger brother was committing the robbery. They both got 99 years, I believe, although the younger brother is appealing the case. The defense tried to argue that the younger brother was under the control of the older brother (a world-class wheelchair racer) but the judge and jury didn’t buy it.
So does there remain a General Question here?
I think Rudolf Hess would be an example.
To some degree, Manson is also in solitary for his own protection. He’s one of the most famous (or infamous, as the case may be) prisoners in the United States, and as such, is a target for anyone wishing to make a name for himself.
In fact, he’s been the target of at least one attack; his cellmate doused him with paint thinner and set him on fire, leaving Manson with 2nd- and 3rd-degree burns to about 20% of his body. This happened in 1984, and I don’t know if he’s been attacked since.
Robin
[sub]BTW, this is my 1,000th post![/sub]
As was pointed out earlier, the rules regarding “felony muder” (i.e. the concept that everyone involved in a felony that leads to a murder is as responsible for the death as the actual killer) have led to life sentences- sometimes even death sentences- for criminals who never killed anybody. If I’m part of a group of armed men pulling off a jewelry store heist, and one of my partners shoots somebody, I’m viewed as culpable for the victim’s death, even if I never wanted anyone to get hurt.
Indeed, death penalty opponents have cited a surprising number of cases in which felons who committed murder received lighter sentences than accomplices who never hurt anybody. In a few cases, the killer was eventually released from prison, while his accomplice (a bad guy, of course, but not a murderer) was executed.
Hitler most certaintly killed people during World War I.
OK, we’ve established that the answer to the OP is “lots of people are/were punished for murder despite not pulling the trigger themselves.” We don’t need a list. This thread is closed.