So it is fair that someone who kills an unknown and/or unwanted person should get parole because there is no whipped-up public outcry?
It seems that brain scans of sociopaths show faulty connections within their brain:
This has some pretty profound implications. If we can scan convicted criminals brains, we might actually be able to determine which ones are actually capable of feeling empathy and which ones are only “faking it.”
What if one day, they figure out how to repair these faulty connections in the brain of a psychopath? Would it still be worthwhile to keep them locked up even after their new selves have empathy levels rivaling the Dalai Lama?
I didn’t start this thread, and I’m not aware of anyone who has committed similar crimes being paroled. If that happens, and someone starts a thread about it, I’ll be sure to voice my disapproval of it.
I’ve been seeing a clear implication that they are somehow being treated unfairly. I don’t think it’s possible to treat them unfairly.
No, I’m saying they’re still individually dangerous. SHE is still dangerous. She’s still a psychopath whether she still associates herself with Manson or not.
And, as an outsider without access to her prison, medical or psychological records, you are basing this judgment on…?
Her crimes.
Thank you, Dr. the Cynic.
If I were a Manson family member, I wold thank my lucky stars every day that I was alive. She got the luckiest break there is–she is alive. She doesn’t deserve any others.
You don’t have the credentials or the authority to call Van Houten a sociopath or a psychopath- in the first place you’re not a psychiatrist and if you were you haven’t examined her. Psychopath & sociopath are specific diagnoses that are not synonymous with somebody who has committed violent crimes.
Manson I’d have no problem believing it of, Joran Van Der Sloot meets all of the criteria, but Van Houten to my knowledge has never been diagnosed. It’s certainly not characteristic behavior of a sociopath to pose as a reformed person for 30+ years so that they can get outside and resume their killing spree, and it’s a defining characterist that sociopaths are not social people- the main interest they have in others is personal gain and power over them. They are also extremely rare, thus it’s a bit strange that several of them all happened to wind up on Spahn Ranch.
I have little problem believing she was weak willed and easily led and controlled. NOW, whether somebody who was weak willed enough to commit murder for no better reason than a leader tells her to is a risk when it comes to release is a very valid point, but it doesn’t mean she’s a sociopath. Calling her one is a bit like calling all German soldiers who participated in the Holocaust inhuman monsters- it’s not only not true but it’s more terrifying to me that most of them weren’t homicidal monsters before or after the war.
Exactly.
Well, in some ways she’s had it better than Linda Kasabian, the Manson who wasn’t fed after midnight or whatever and was given immunity for turning state’s evidence. Kasabian is not believed to have actively participated in the murders, though she was present. Her life since the trials has been basically hell: poverty, constant brushes with the law (usually over drug use and possession), losing custody of her kids several times (and at least one of the kids turned out really bad). Van Houten has at least never had to worry about money and she’s had the chance to earn degrees and all that.
I don’t have sympathy for Van Houten, and I agree she’s gotten her life and that’s more than she deserved for her crime, but I think it makes a mockery of the parole hearings to keep denying her when a less high profile murderer would have been released years ago. (Caril Fugate wasn’t much less high profile and was released many years ago- admittedly the fact she was a minor worked in her favor, but she was a minor who participated in several terrible murders.)
As a gay man what appalls me is that Van Houten married (and divorced) in prison. Tex Watson married in prison and has four kids from conjugal visits. Susan Atkins married twice while in prison, and while she’s famous for saying “I have no mercy for you bitch” as Tate was stabbed she herself got to die while her husband was in the room. These were all completely legally recognized unions performed for people who had been- rightly- on Death Row, for whom there was absolutely no hope they’d ever contribute anything to society and whose incarcerations and trials actually cost millions and millions to the state, yet they were all guaranteed full marital rights as the SCotUS has TWICE upheld the rights of prisoners, regardless of their crimes, to marry.
However, the same state in which they all live voted to outlaw all unions by gays. This means that a gay couple that has been together for 50 years or more (such as Del and Phyllis) and productive and not a drain on society but contributing tax-paying members had less rights than convicted mass murderers. Thanks LDS.
Actually, it’s been 41 years.
We’re talking about a 60-year woman incarcerated for a crime committed when she was just 19 years old. She’s been in prison for two-thirds of her life, and virtually all of her adult life.
Y’know… it is kind of messed up to have a situation in which for practical purposes the intent is for the sentence to be effectively “life w/o parole”, but since the legislature did not have the foresight to have that be the fallback in case of suspension of the death penalty, the authorities now have to periodically perform a sham parole hearing. Would have been better to have been able to take it off the table to begin with.
Has any of the remaining Mansonite lifers (other than Charlie) ever just said, “hey, let’s not waste each other’s time, thanks for the empty gesture anyway”? They must KNOW there is a standing policy to never grant them parole. Or is this one of those situations in which the defense lawyer is duty bound to at least go through the motions every time it comes up?
Nor do I need any. Her crimes speak for themselves. Normal people cannot carve up a nine months pregnant woman with a knife for no reason (literally, for NO reason).
So what? That’s what you get when you break into people’s houses and butcher them for no reason. I just cannot fathom why anybody thinks any of these people deserve any kind of a break whatsoever.
I agree, but want to nitpick, Leslie did not do that, she supposedly stabbed an already dead woman. That no way releases her from the horrors of what Tex did, just nitpicking.
She was there. She was in on it, she didn’t try to stop it or try to report it afterward. She’s exactly as culpable as the rest of them. Even going along with something like that is beyond the ken of normal human beings.
Incidentally. Charlie wasn’t there at all, and actually had no direct personal involvement in any of the killings, so even stabbing an already dead body (and we only have her own self-serving account that that’s all she did, by the way) is more than what Manson himself did.
I’d also add some hefty doses of LSD in there. Hallucinogenics often get thrown in as an after thought which is odd, to me. They are called ‘mind altering’ for a reason.
(And while I know it was a bit off topic, I’m in total agreement with your outrage over prisoners marrying.)
I did a lot of LSD. I never butchered anybody.
Actually, Charlie Did go into the LaBianca’s house and tied them up!
eta" Charles Watson also claimed Leslie did just that. He should know.