Not easy for a prisoner to do right?
And she is denied parole for the 19th time.
No Czarcasm, what is sickening is cold blood murder, what is sickening is that all she has to do is sit in prison for 30 years and say she is sorry and then all is right in the world. What is sickening is that she has to actually seek parole and she is on her 19th hearing, that she actually appealed her first conviction.
I’m sorry but saying your remorsful but then doing everything in your power to avoid any punishment for your crime, means you are not remorful just selfish
“All she has to do” is 30 years in prison. Try spending even a single day in prison and get back to me on how “easy” it is to do time there.
30 years is a very, very, long time. People can change. I’m a very different person than I was 10 years ago, and I’ll no doubt be a different person 10 years from now. I know there’s a very strong temptation to freeze frame someone who has done something terrible like this, and judge their entire value as a person based off of the worst thing that they’ve ever done, but I don’t think it necesarily reflects what their true character is in the present moment.
I don’t minimize her crime and I have no problem with her having spent 40 years in prison for it; frankly I think she and her fellow murderers should have died and been made mulch more than 30 years ago. While I generally do not believe in the death penalty it is for practical reasons rather than ethical (basically the fact that if you’re an inner city black guy or trailer park white guy you’re a thousand times more likely to get it than somebody who is just as guilty but able to afford decent legal representation). I have no ethical problem with capital punishment when the guilt of the condemned is beyond any question- which Van Houten’s is- and the crime sufficiently terrible- and the LaBianca deaths certainly were. The fact she was a drugged up confused kid is not sufficiently mitigating- 1969 had no shortage of drugged up confused kids and very few of them committed murder, let alone one like the LaBianca scene.
However, to quote D.A. Trotter in My Cousin Vinnie- “It don’t matter what I think”.
The fact is that THEY WEREN’T executed in the early 1970s, because like it or not, whether they should have been or not, the laws WERE changed, and however horrible the crime if s he is entitled to parole the fame of the crime should not be a consideration, but the very fact she’s been in prison for 41 years (minus a few months- Van Houten is unique among the Manson murderers in that she has been free since the crimes when her verdict was appealed- a period completely free of incident) proves she’s not. There have been murders every bit as horrifying as anything the Mansons did but as they did not involve celebrities they are not as remembered, and in some cases (the Ramon Novarro case comes to mind, or the Badlands murders) the convicted went free. (The brothers who killed Novarro both committed felonies again- rape and murder- and wound up back in prison; Caril Ann Fugate lives in a public assistance housing and has not committed any crimes since paroled- Squeaky Fromme who is crazier than Van Houten by far has had, to my knowledge, an incident free probation as well, as has her fellow Assassins character Sara Jane Moore.)
Manson himself is batshit crazy and will never be paroled if he lives to be 220, Atkins may or may not have been repentant and I couldn’t care less that she died in prison- I agree with Bugliosi’s assessment of her that anybody who could do what she did (even if she did “only” hold Tate while Watson stabbed her in her pregnant stomach) either has something most people lack or lacks something most people have but either way it wasn’t worth the risk of letting her go. Ditto Tex Watson.
My main practical concerns with Van Houten’s release are
1- Her safety- the state of California sure has hell doesn’t have the resources to keep her guarded (you can argue it’s cheaper than keeping her in prison BUT her bunk would instantaneously be filled with somebody else) and she’d be prime for somebody seeking ‘justice’ or fame or whatever to kill
2- Groupies. She claims that she has nothing to do with them and she probably doesn’t, but that might change if she was released and immediately encountered all of the hatred and outrage and suddenly a small army of poseurs and druggies offer her worship.
A question I’d like to hear her asked at a parole hearing is “Suppose you were released and you were eating at a fast food place and somebody recognized you and called you every bad word you have ever heard and a few coined in the last 40 years and said you should have been killed- a VERY likely scenario- how would you react?”
But just as Freedom of Speech extends to American Muslim extremists calling for jihad and praising 9-11 or for Phelps screaming AIDS Cures Fags, I think that if Van Houten, regardless of who she murdered, must get parole if anybody else in her situation would get it, and I don’t think there’s any doubt that they would. Otherwise she’s being held not for murder but for murdering a woman (or was it the man? I can’t remember if it was Leno or Rosemary she stabbed) who was murdered by some of the same people who murdered somebody famous, which is ridiculous.
And to repeat, I don’t exonerate her or minimize the crime- I think it deserved the death penalty it originally got- but as the law was changed she should have the same consideration as anybody else or any pretense of equality under the law is meaningless.
PS- I’ll admit I’ve changed my views since this thread was started.
What impressed me about Waters over most ‘celebs with a cause’ was when he was interviewed on a cable talk show and the host said “What do you say to those who say this crime was horrible and caused generations of pain and blah blah blah” and Waters said “That they are absolutely correct”. Obviously there was a “but…”, but… it impressed me he doesn’t try to put any spin at all on her crime, and that he also regrets having made light of the murders early in his career.
Thread I startedwhen HuffPost serialized that.
I don’t buy her “repentance” for a second. Sociopaths can’t be cured. She’s just a con artist. I also wouldn’t give a shit even if it was sincere (which it absolutely is NOT). What does being sorry have to do with anything? Who gives a shit? Her victims are just as dead. Absolutely no way is it sane to let this psycho out. If we let the Manson killers out, we might as well let everybody out of prison because no one deserves to be there more than these animals. I don’t even think they should be allowed human conversation or decent meals. They should rot in concrete boxes eating cockroaches.
I don’t know how anyone can read what they did in those murders and think any of them deserve an ounce of empathy or mercy. They certainly had none, and I’m sure as hell not going to be impressed by their self-serving fake “repentance.”
At least Charlie has had the decency not to pretend he’s sorry. If only the rest of them had his integrity.
Rosemary LaBianca can’t. She didn’t have an opportunity to change or do anything else in the last thirty-one years.
To me, if you willfully murder somebody, then you should be put away from society forever. You go to prison and you stay there until you’re dead. It’s a crime too big to forgive and forget about.
I’ve known lots of murderers. Some of them do sincerely repent. I knew Mark Chapman. I honestly believe he regrets murdering John Lennon. But his regret doesn’t bring John Lennon back to life. There’s things you do that you can’t undo.
On the other hand, keeping someone in prison forever isn’t going to bring anyone back either.
No, but its some solace to the victims relatives.
No, it will keep the killer from repeating the crime. Even if a convicted murderer becomes the next messiah, he should be executed for what he did. Murder cannot be undone, regardless if the murderer changes, finds god, regrets their crime, or anything else.
And as a member of society, I want convicted murderers permanently removed from our world, either by way of state sanctioned execution or lifetime incarceration.
Life is cheap for many folks here. Kill someone then after a few years say you are sorry and you are on parole back in society. So if someone had 50 years of life left and you kill them, you only serve maybe 15 to 20 years in prison. Not a bad price to pay if you absolutely need to kill someone. Take 50 years and pay 15 to 20.
No it won’t. That’s why I said it was something that can’t be undone. Rosemary LaBianca was murdered in 1969 and she’s still murdered in 2010. So Leslie Van Houten should still be in prison in 2010. Her crime lasts forever; so should her punishment.
And society shouldn’t have to live with murderers among it. If you willfully murder somebody, then society has the right to reject you as unfit to live within it.
Is there redemption and/or forgiveness in this society you wish to live in?
Sociopaths can’t be redeemed. Forgiveness is neither here nor there. I don’t see how anyone but her victims have a right to forgive her anyway.
Yeah, but there should also be justice.
I take it you are a time traveler from the far future who knows exactly what humans are and are not capable of?
By victims, do you mean those who have died? But it is society that sentenced them and takes responsibility for them.
I know what they’re not capable of right now, and sociopathy right now is a permanent, incurable condition. If it becomes possible to cure them in the future, then maybe we can reevaluate their capacity for redemption. Right now it’s impossible. They can be quite good at faking repentance, but they can’t actually feel it. They never developed the part of the brain that feels empathy and guilt.
I also mean the families and loved ones of those they killed. As a society, we imprison them to protect others. Forgiveness is an issue for the victims, not for the state. The state’s mandate is to protect others.
I agree that a democratic society can certainly make that choice, and it’s a legitimate one - but what benefits does it confer? The European democracies generally impose much milder sentences, for everything up to and including murder - lifetime incarceration is quite rare. And yet they seem to function about as well as our own Republic, with much lower costs associated with housing and feeding prisoners. Is their choice less prudent than our own?
So all murderers where the victim’s family and loved ones have moved on and forgiven should be let out immediately, even if they haven’t served their whole sentence? Is it o.k. to let out a murderer if no family or loved ones exist?