Is she past breeding age? I don’t think revenge is very purposeful, but I would prefer that genes are not passed on if they code for gullible dumbasses who can be turned into braindead weapons controlled by charismatic psychopaths.
She’s 60 and if she weren’t she’d be dead before the child is born (terminal cancer).
Fucking bullshit. She was a willing participant and she support Manson for years after she was separated from him. Compare her to Patricia Hearst, who was forced into participating in the bank robbery, who denounced her captives the first chance she got, and who never killed anybody. Hearst was rightfully pardoned. Atkins should die in prison.
After 9/11 several young people asked me how people could do shit like that. I made a point of telling each and every one of them that the minute any group says you should be willing to kill and/or die for them, you should immediately be out the door.
Sampiro
Try reading the whole thread, try reading all my posts, try reading for comprehension.
-FrL-
Unless they are enlisting in their countries’ military, verdad?
In the military and the police department, that is an upfront given statement. I don’t think most cults recruit with the idea that “at some point, you are going to have to kill someone.”
It was 39 years ago. A person can change a lot in that time. Is the Susan Atkins now even really the same person who committed the crime?
Clearly, the people who still want her to fry have proven that false.
Probably not. I am not the same person I was 20 years ago, and I didn’t even go to prison.
However, your question does touch on the question of the purposes of sentencing (and parole). (I discussed that a little bit on page 1, post 31, while responding to Qadqop the Mercotan.)
Sentencing serves four purposes, as laid out by him:
- Punishment
- Deterence
- Rehabilitation
- Protect the public from further anti-social behavior by the convict.
Reasonable people can debate how current sentencing meets (or fails to) these objectives. And we do. Sentencing has not been static. The public’s views change, too.
Why? I responded to one where you spefically addressed me with a notion any reasonable person would interpret as accusing me of basing an opinion of a fantasy of what happened. Seems quite a fair thing to respond to that one only.
No- she’s now a 60 year old dying amputee. No reasonable person could claim she’s of any harm to society.
BUT
There’s also no way a person can be punished enough for what she did. This was among the most heinous crimes ever committed against innocent people by others not acting under military or official orders. There is debate as to how much she’s changed, but if this crime does not demand lifetime incarceration then I cannot think of one that does. Oversimplifying it admittedly, but I think it’s a near social need she pay until she is dead.
Fair enough.
As far as I could tell, your sentiments were based in views that Atkins stabbed Tate, and that Atkins told Tate that her screaming was annoying Atkins as she did so. It turns out that these views are debatable. She may not, after all, be the person who actually did the stabbing, and she may not, after all, have actually said the thing about Atkin’s screaming being annoying. Hence, if someone (for example, you) feels a certain way toward Atkins because one thinks she did these two things, it turns out that it is possible–as I said, “debatable”–that one’s sentiments are based in a fantasy.
As I’ve clarified in posts number 129 and 137, in point of fact, I do think that the actual facts can properly found many of the kinds of sentiments you and others have expressed. It’s just that it’s debatable whether the actual facts correspond to your (and others’) beliefs about what happened during the comission of the crime.
A couple of the other people I’m talking to in this thread have now understood this point, and have replied by insisting they think the evidence supports their version of the story. I disagree that the support is that strong, but I don’t want to pursue that point any further. My only point here is to remind people that it doesn’t make any sense to base one’s sentiments about a person on beliefs about that person which are not quite certain.
Here’s an illustration. To me, you guys kind of look like the character C in the following dialogue:
C: Joe has it coming–he punched Billy!
D: Actually, it turns out it’s not clear who Joe punched. It’s possible he punched Gary instead. In either case, he had no good reason, so in either case, he has it coming.
C: What, you’re trying to defend Joe? But he punched Billy!
D: No, I’m not defending him–I said he has it coming in either case. I’m just saying it turns out it’s not so clear who he punched. He might have punched Gary.
C: What, so, we’re supposed to think he’s a real nice guy for punching Gary instead of Billy? Or whatever you’re saying? He’s an asshole either way!
D: Yes. This is what I said. I said whichever actually happened, Joe definitely has it coming. I just want to make sure we think he’s an asshole because he’s an asshole, not because we think he did something he didn’t actually do.
C: Yeah. Whatever. Joe’s a real jerk for punching Billy. Dude’s got it coming.
-FrL-
A view that is held by her multiple confessions and the opinions of the court that convicted her. While that may be debatable (and whether it’s debatable is in fact debatable- prisoners proclaiming innocence aren’t exactly rare as blue unicorn tails) what is not debatable at all is that she was an accessory to MULTIPLE murders (Tate, her baby [since he could have lived outside the womb I’m guessing he qualifies], Steven Parent, Sebring, Frykowski, Folger, Leno Labianca, Rosemary Labianca, Gary Hinman, and others) all of which added together, along with child molestation and car theft and other charges, could easily equal life in prison.
Here’s a better illustration:
C: Susan Atkins had it coming. She repeatedly stabbed a helpless pregnant woman who did her no harm and mocked her when she begged for the life of her child, then wrote things with her blood, while all around her others were being brutally murdered, then participated in equally heinous murders the next night of a middle aged couple who were stabbed repeatedly and she wrote things in their blood, and went to murder an actor but didn’t go through with it only because Linda Kasabian lied about where he lived. She then boasted of it in prison and claimed to orgasm while tasting her blood, mocked the family members of the murdered in court, and remained remorseless for years.
D: She says she didn’t now. She was just standing around while a pregnant woman pleading for the life of her baby was repeatedly stabbed and others were stabbed repeatedly and then just present again when the Labiancas were murdered, and she’s completed college and married twice and says she’s much better now.
C: Oh, well… that’s okay then. Does she need a job? I know a helpdesk position out in the valley that’s practically going beggging.
Really? You read my post and that’s what you got?
No. No honest reader who has a smidge of intelligence could have got that out of what I wrote.
-FrL-
By the way your last post is just, and I mean just exactly, a paradigmatic example of what I was talking about when I had C say the following:
I’m really amazed that, after I presented what I thought was really a slightly unfair parody of you and others on this thread, you did something so directly and comically in line with that parody.
-FrL-
There is NO analogy to Atkins’ crime. All parodies and analogs, regardless of how tame or from what angle the assault, will fail.
Nuh-uh! You are!
Frylock, there’s just one little detail missing from your hypothetical. Let’s try to fit your scenario to reality, shall we?
C: Joe has it coming–he punched Billy!
D: Actually, it turns out it’s not clear who Joe punched. It’s possible he punched Gary instead. In either case, he had no good reason, so in either case, he has it coming.
C: Ah, I forgot to mention something. Joe punched Billy! And then he told his friends, Freddie, Andy, Frankie, and that fucking loser kid who keeps picking his nose when he thinks we’re not looking that he punched Billy. And then he told a cop he punched Billy. And then he told a priest, a rabbi, and three Hare Krishna’s at the airport he punched Billy. And then he took out a full-paged ad in the NYT saying about how awesome it felt punching Billy. And then in the principal’s office, he kept cracking wise about punching Billy! And then . . .
D: OK, OK, never mind, I get the point. Joe punched Billy. It’s clear to me now.
C: But then later on, he said that he didn’t actually punch Billy, and I said–
D: Look, just shut up, will you? Joe punched Billy. Helen-fucking-Keller can see that Joe punched Billy, and never mind what he said after, and . . . You know what, C, why don’t you just go over there. No, there, farther away. You get on my nerves.
Get the picture? It’s. Not. Debatable!! Atkins killed Sharon. There is NO reasonable doubt.
9/11 conspiracy whacko’s have gotten a lot of attention and made a pretty penny with your definition of the word “debatable.”
Yes, as I said before, you understood my point, and made the relatively reasonable reply that it still looks to you to be quite certain that Atkins actually performed the stabbing. Based on this certainty, you feel the sentiment “Oooo Evil Bitch!” That’s fair enough. I don’t think the matter is as certain as you think it is, but as long as you get my point (which you did) then that’s okay.
Sampiro’s not even getting the point. He and I aren’t even to the point of asking why I’d call it “debatable.” He’s still at the point of thinking I’m somehow defending Atkins–as witnessed by his second to last post–and this is something you yourself have moved past. You know I’m not doing that. I’m just making a fairly dry point about how we ought to base our sentiments.
-FrL-
You are defending Atkins. You’re saying she might not be guilty of what she is guilty of past all reasonable doubt. I call that defending her. What do you call it?
Hint: I went back and edited the dialogue so that it made the point a bit more clearly.
Is C defending Joe in the dialogue I posted? (I know that you see a disanalogy between C and me, but I just want to be clear about what you are saying it takes to be “defending” someone, so if you will do me the favor, tell me the answer to the question.)
-FrL-
(By the way when I say I’m not defending her, I mean I am not defending her from the charge that she did inexcusably heinous and horrendous things, participating in murderous activities that were almost indescribably evil, and deserves to be punished as severely as possible for it.)