Do the Manson girls deserve parole?

[PKRudeBoy]

From her 2004 parole hearing.

http://www.cielodrive.com/patricia-kren ... g-2004.php

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: Do you work Step Eight?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Is Eight a list of all the - people that I've caused harm to? Yes I have.

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: And who is on top of the list?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Probably myself, first

.

That's right. The top of Krenwinkel list of people she has harmed is not Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowsk or Jay Sebring. But herself. Not her victims, whose life was cut short, but her poor self who is stuck in jail.

The self aggrandizement of the bitch. To borrow a psychiatric phrase, the person displays "lack of insight."

This doesn't look like remorse, and frankly I fail to see how it benefits society to let someone who has such a lack of empathy and has committed murder back out.

We are all selfish bastards and bitches if we will admit it or not.

Well yes, but society expects you to at least pretend to obey the social conventions, and if you can't even do that at a parole hearing, why would you actually follow them once released. Contrast with Nathan Leopold, who also committed a heinous crime, but while in prison went above and beyond even a model prisoner, tried to atone for his crime as much as possible, and was eventually released.

[mr friendly guy]

We are all selfish bastards and bitches if we will admit it or not.

We do look after ourselves, however those with insight or some objectivity would acknowledge that they wronged someone else more than themselves, irregardless of whether we are selfish or selfless. I have heard people who were bullies at a younger age feel bad about it now that they are older. Krenwinkel despite being decades older still hasn't got it. That's the problem. Her lack of insight into the crime is quite telling.

[Block]

From her 2004 parole hearing.

http://www.cielodrive.com/patricia-kren ... g-2004.php

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: Do you work Step Eight?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Is Eight a list of all the - people that I've caused harm to? Yes I have.

PRESIDING COMMISSIONER ANGELE: And who is on top of the list?

INMATE KRENWINKEL: Probably myself, first

.

That's right. The top of Krenwinkel list of people she has harmed is not Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowsk or Jay Sebring. But herself. Not her victims, whose life was cut short, but her poor self who is stuck in jail.

The self aggrandizement of the bitch. To borrow a psychiatric phrase, the person displays "lack of insight."

This doesn't look like remorse, and frankly I fail to see how it benefits society to let someone who has such a lack of empathy and has committed murder back out.

We are all selfish bastards and bitches if we will admit it or not.

There are significantly different levels of self involvement depending on the person.

[Raw Shark]

I clipped a lot but kind of wanted to start here. . . . .I did not say that they should be absolved of all debt
I just consider that after 40 years in prison, their debt is paid. Well, not completely paid, that is never really possible but enough to be released from prison.

Based on what? Should we just get rid of life sentences and cap it at 40 years regardless of circumstances if they behave well inside, because that's, "enough to be released from prison?"

Now, one of the Mansion family tried to kill the president of the United States. She was released in 2009 and has been living quietly for five years now.

Two, actually. I linked to their wikipedia pages in an earlier post. You do read the posts of the people who are disagreeing with you, right?

If she had been with the other women at the time, I am pretty sure she would have been a party to the murders as well. She was lucky she got caught and it became attempted murder.

Yes, we'll never know if Fromme or Moore would've giggled at photos of their own victim's mutilated corpse. The same cannot be said of Krenwinkel and Van Houten.

Part of my argument is that I think a great many people could potentially fall into the same situation as those women and find themselves going along with the leader. Maybe me to be blunt. Why can find cases of whole cults committing suicide because of a charismatic leader. Is there something actually different about them or do we all have the seeds inside us? I think it is the latter.

I think that it's kind of a flying leap to go from, "a great many people could potentially fall into the same situation," to, "we all have the seeds inside us," and also that you are projecting your own feelings of susceptibility to a seductively-charismatic authority figure onto others to make yourself feel better about them. Some of us don't get warm fuzzies at the idea of surrendering our will, we throw up in our mouths a little.

[Simon_Jester]

This suggests that they may be just a little unusual. The Milgram experiments prove that more people can be induced to commit evil by an authority figure than we might think. But they don't mean everyone is absolved from responsibility at all times. Nor do they mean all people are equally gullible when it comes to being persuaded to commit evils.

I clipped a lot but kind of wanted to start here. . . . .I did not say that they should be absolved of all debt

I just consider that after 40 years in prison, their debt is paid. Well, not completely paid, that is never really possible but enough to be released from prison.

The problem is that you don't measure "debt to society" in number values like "oh, I can pay for crime X with Y years in jail." Years of your life are not a form of currency, because it's actively expensive to the state to keep you in jail. You aren't repaying anyone by spending a year in jail; you are consuming resources that would more profitably spent on thousands of other things.

The logical reason to even have prisons in the first place is to protect the public from the criminals while working to reform the criminals. So before we release a convict from prison by giving them parole, we ask ourselves two questions:

1) Is this person a threat to the public, and
2) Are they reformed?

(1) can still be an issue with a 65-year-old woman, believe it or not. Such a person can still commit murders if they decide to do so.

(2) is an issue if the convict does not show psychological growth or healing. If there is no evidence that this person's thinking is fundamentally different than the thinking which landed them in prison in the first place, then releasing them is unwise. In particular, psychopathy, narcissism, and a personal enjoyment of violence are all conditions that are notoriously hard to treat and hard to recover from. If someone commits murder because they are a psychopath and it amuses them to do so, odds are they will never be safe to be released back into the population at large... because we simply don't know how to take a psychopath and give them a conscience.

Now, one of the Mansion family tried to kill the president of the United States. She was released in 2009 and has been living quietly for five years now. If she had been with the other women at the time, I am pretty sure she would have been a party to the murders as well. She was lucky she got caught and it became attempted murder.

And in the assessment of her parole board, she no longer poses enough of a threat to society for there to be a need to keep her behind bars. Whatever insanity drove her (and looking at quotes from her she sounded pretty out of touch with reality), apparently they decided it was over.

Good for her. That doesn't mean that their specific conclusion about that specific woman can be turned into a general conclusion about all murderers in general.

There's a reason we have parole boards rather than just saying that all sentences are shortened by X years, or having the king declare that all prisoners are to be set free on the tenth anniversary of his wedding, or some arbitrary system like that. The prison system has a responsibility to monitor its inmates and decide which of them are safe to be allowed back into public. And since they have a vast wealth of detailed, specific knowledge about their inmates, of which you are necessarily ignorant, perhaps it would be best to avoid arguments of the form:

"A was a Manson cultist. B was a Manson cultist. A has been given parole. Therefore, B should be given parole."

Part of my argument is that I think a great many people could potentially fall into the same situation as those women and find themselves going along with the leader. Maybe me to be blunt.

Yes, but you have no proof of this claim, and there are a number of reasons why other people might disagree with you.

Perhaps we should start our experiments into "is it easy to turn normal humans into murder cultists, or is there something unusual about humans who become murder cultists?" by doing something cautious. Like controlled psychological experiments of some kind. Perhaps... not by releasing murderesses who committed heinous, merciless knife killings and giggled about them and who show worrying signs of psychopathy to this day?

Why can find cases of whole cults committing suicide because of a charismatic leader. Is there something actually different about them or do we all have the seeds inside us? I think it is the latter.

Yes. That is your opinion. I heard you the first and second times you said so.

The problem is that your opinion is not enough to base an entire criminal justice system on; it must be backed by some kind of rational evidence. Please note that you have to pass two barriers of proof here, just to give yourself a logical case for the paroles. You must establish that:

1) People who join murder cults are "normal," in that there's nothing fundamentally different about them.
2) People who join murder cults revert to being normal after a reasonable period of time, and are not permanently damaged or made permanently dysfunctional.

(1) is an issue because we can't actually know one way or the other. The fraction of all people who join cults is quite small. Most people resist joining cults- they get bored and walk away, they listen to their friends who are telling them it's a mistake, they listen to an inner voice telling them that what the cult leader is saying can't be right.

Only a small minority of humans ever join a cult intense enough that it might kill. Or intense enough that it might commit suicide. Or intense enough that it might do anything drastic enough that we'd call it seriously abnormal.

So how in Heaven's name are we to prove that this small minority of humans are psychologically normal for the species? Isn't it at least as likely that they are the most susceptible and vulnerable ones, who fall prey to a psychological pressure normal humans can resist?

(2) is an issue because even if we grant that any human can be made into a giggling axe-murder-cultist given time and the wrong influences... we don't know if it's always possible to change them back. If it isn't, and we fail to change them back, then surely it is better to keep the giggling axe-murder-cultists safely locked away, where they cannot murder us with axes.

[Raw Shark]

It's quite comical to watch somebody flee with their tail between their legs, while posting in and even starting other threads, from a thread they started to soapbox about something they don't actually know very much about, must say. Thanks for the laughs, Kitsune.

[Kitsune]

It's quite comical to watch somebody flee with their tail between their legs, while posting in and even starting other threads, from a thread they started to soapbox about something they don't actually know very much about, must say. Thanks for the laughs, Kitsune.

Just because I want to take a few days and want to consider a response does not mean that I am "running with a tail between my legs." That response is simply obnoxious.

In addition, it is quite possible that I did not consider any value with continue to respond. I have gotten into discussions on conservative boards where I just saw no way of responding in any way to make any kind of dent. Does not mean I agree with them. There have been threads on this board which I have felt that way as well.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Simon nailed it I think. There's a good reason we let professionals handle parole hearings rather than leave it up to public opinion.

As for the "anyone can become a murderer" part, yes, anyone can. But there is a big difference between "Became a murderer in a moment of passion and shot someone" and "planned in advance a murder of someone and used a (from what I understand) psychologically difficult method...and then laughed about it in court." To expand on that "difficult" part, AFAIK, shooting someone is "easier" on the mind than stabbing someone. Stabbing someone repeatedly is even harder.

So, they joined this cult. They knew the murders were planned in advance (whether these women were involved in the planning I don't know). They brutally murder someone in a way that's apparently very difficult to make yourself do, and then giggle and laugh about it at trial. That's a good sign that they are not normal. That right there is enough for me to say "no, no parole."

If it was down to one person's charismatic personality, then they would show some signs of remorse, even at trial, not laughter. And certainly, 40 years later, wouldn't say "I've hurt myself the most."

[Kitsune]

I might reconsider my position on the Mansion Women. . . .Maybe it does not matter if they changed or not.
I have not decided and it is an issue that may require a lot more consideration.

Do want to state one item as far as trusting professionals. Police consider confessions to be a gold standard but many psychologists have found that under pressure, false confessions are a real risk. There are plenty of professions in law enforcement that still believe in things like Satanic Ritual Abuse. There is nothing wrong with questioning something. Almost everybody on this forum are atheists and we likely question ministers even though they are the "professionals."

I have been watching a show called "Wicked Attraction." There are plenty of cases where somebody will be convinced by somebody else into becoming a murderer, often a boyfriend / girlfriend. While some had bad childhoods, others had relatively normal childhoods and seemed to be decent people. Many were also young, just as young as the Manson women when they committed the crimes. I would argue that at a young age many people can be convinced into a life of violence.

I would also argue that a case could be made that the Manson Women hurt themselves the most. . . .
The death of those that killed, as horrible as they were, were comparatively brief.
I understand that one might have differences of opinion and I have no major problem with that.

Now, they are undoubtedly guilty of murder but I would argue in a case of wrongful conviction, the imprisonment of somebody for decades for a crime they did not commit, that is in many ways worse that the death of the individual murdered.

[Broomstick]

I might reconsider my position on the Mansion Women. . . .Maybe it does not matter if they changed or not.

Bullshit. It does matter if they've changed or not, but you have yet to provide evidence they've changed enough and in a manner where they are no longer a threat to society.

A case where someone was determined changed enough to be paroled after a brutal murder was that of Nathan Leopold, who, among other things, volunteered to be deliberately infected with malaria and used as a human guinea pig for developing new treatments. So, tell me, how have the Manson Girls put their own lives at risk for the betterment of others?

I have been watching a show called "Wicked Attraction." There are plenty of cases where somebody will be convinced by somebody else into becoming a murderer, often a boyfriend / girlfriend. While some had bad childhoods, others had relatively normal childhoods and seemed to be decent people. Many were also young, just as young as the Manson women when they committed the crimes. I would argue that at a young age many people can be convinced into a life of violence.

Oddly enough, though, MOST people don't murder people and it is obviously within the range of normal to resist such temptation as encountered in ordinary life.

I would also argue that a case could be made that the Manson Women hurt themselves the most. . . .
The death of those that killed, as horrible as they were, were comparatively brief.
I understand that one might have differences of opinion and I have no major problem with that.

You are so full of shit it's unbelievable. You are totally disregarding the on-going anguish of the relatives of those murdered people, the fear they caused in the community, and all the other fall-out of murder.

[Raw Shark]

It's quite comical to watch somebody flee with their tail between their legs, while posting in and even starting other threads, from a thread they started to soapbox about something they don't actually know very much about, must say. Thanks for the laughs, Kitsune.

Just because I want to take a few days and want to consider a response does not mean that I am "running with a tail between my legs." That response is simply obnoxious.

In addition, it is quite possible that I did not consider any value with continue to respond. I have gotten into discussions on conservative boards where I just saw no way of responding in any way to make any kind of dent. Does not mean I agree with them. There have been threads on this board which I have felt that way as well.

It took you six days to mull it over and come up with that? Get the fuck out, murder groupie.

[snip] Do want to state one item as far as trusting professionals. Police consider confessions to be a gold standard but many psychologists have found that under pressure, false confessions are a real risk. There are plenty of professions in law enforcement that still believe in things like Satanic Ritual Abuse. There is nothing wrong with questioning something. Almost everybody on this forum are atheists and we likely question ministers even though they are the "professionals."

Bullshit. Nobody who has been coerced into a false confession giggles at photos of the body. Also, I am an atheist and I trust ministers just fine to do their job, which is to provide religious services to religious people.

[snip] I would also argue that a case could be made that the Manson Women hurt themselves the most. . . .
The death of those that killed, as horrible as they were, were comparatively brief.
I understand that one might have differences of opinion and I have no major problem with that.

Swell. My opinion differs in that I think it makes her sound like a remorseless narcissist who you apparently feel a great deal of empathy or sympathy for.

Now, they are undoubtedly guilty of murder but I would argue in a case of wrongful conviction, the imprisonment of somebody for decades for a crime they did not commit, that is in many ways worse that the death of the individual murdered.

I would argue that a case of wrongful conviction, the imprisonment of somebody for decades for a crime they did not commit, is in many ways a completely-irrelevant non-sequitor to this discussion. Are you fucking high right now? Mounds of physical evidence as well as the testimony of an accomplice exists along with the confessions, no matter how coerced you may fantasize that those may have been, you nutjob.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Never
EVER

Not when they growing fucking tangerines on Mars
Fuck them all, their next stop should be Dis

Out of curiosity, are you adamantly against parole as a matter of principle and believe that convicted criminals are inherently beyond any hope of redemption in the eyes of society, or do you just really not like the Manson girls in particular?

[Kitsune]

Bullshit. It does matter if they've changed or not, but you have yet to provide evidence they've changed enough and in a manner where they are no longer a threat to society.

A case where someone was determined changed enough to be paroled after a brutal murder was that of Nathan Leopold, who, among other things, volunteered to be deliberately infected with malaria and used as a human guinea pig for developing new treatments. So, tell me, how have the Manson Girls put their own lives at risk for the betterment of others?

Congratulations. . . . You have created an impossible burden
What you are asking for them to do is not even done anymore.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/med ... show-code/
Really, I think it is an excuse. I think if you were around when Nathan Leopold was around, you would argue that there is nothing that h could do to show that he has changed.

Oddly enough, though, MOST people don't murder people and it is obviously within the range of normal to resist such temptation as encountered in ordinary life.

All because they do not fall into the wrong situation. I have an even better example for you.
How many people willingly joined in the madness that was Cambodia under Pol Pot? Millions.
Is there something unique about the Cambodian people? I doubt it.
Many (Maybe even most) of us are a few steps, a wrong turn, from becoming a monster.

You are so full of shit it's unbelievable. You are totally disregarding the on-going anguish of the relatives of those murdered people, the fear they caused in the community, and all the other fall-out of murder.

I hope that with those still alive that they have found ways of dealing with their grief. I lost a brother about three years.
Granted, it was not murder but still you move on.
As far as fear in the community, there are couple who go on murder sprees every few years which commit as horrible crimes and in some cases get less time. Many don't have an excuse of being under long term of mind control / indoctrination.

Funny thing with you post is that I am willing to accept difference of opinion and think it is something worth debating.
I have respect those who disagree with me in a rational matter. Something that you seem unable or unwilling to do.

[Broomstick]

Bullshit. It does matter if they've changed or not, but you have yet to provide evidence they've changed enough and in a manner where they are no longer a threat to society.

A case where someone was determined changed enough to be paroled after a brutal murder was that of Nathan Leopold, who, among other things, volunteered to be deliberately infected with malaria and used as a human guinea pig for developing new treatments. So, tell me, how have the Manson Girls put their own lives at risk for the betterment of others?

Congratulations. . . . You have created an impossible burden

Really? You, personally, can find nothing to support your assertion that these women have changed sufficiently to be paroled? YOU are the one asking for their sentence to be modified from life to parole, the burden of proof is upon you.

What you are asking for them to do is not even done anymore.

No, you fucking ignoramous, I am NOT asking them to replicate everything done by Leopold, I am asking that it be demonstrated that are not fucking worthless sacks of shit using up other peoples' oxygen. What have they done for the benefit of others? Simply not murdered more people and doing what they're told? Not sufficient.

Really, I think it is an excuse. I think if you were around when Nathan Leopold was around, you would argue that there is nothing that h could do to show that he has changed.

No, asshat, I WAS alive when Leopold was still alive. Do you think everyone here is as young and immature as yourself?

Oddly enough, though, MOST people don't murder people and it is obviously within the range of normal to resist such temptation as encountered in ordinary life.

How many people willingly joined in the madness that was Cambodia under Pol Pot?

Bullshit example. The Manson girls weren't involved in a nation-wide uprising/rebellion/genocide, they joined a small cult and didn't have the back bone to leave when it became apparent the leader was batshit. Not comparable at all.

You are also ignoring all the people who DIDN'T join in the Pol Pot madness as well.

You are so full of shit it's unbelievable. You are totally disregarding the on-going anguish of the relatives of those murdered people, the fear they caused in the community, and all the other fall-out of murder.

I hope that with those still alive that they have found ways of dealing with their grief. I lost a brother about three years. Granted, it was not murder but still you move on.

If your family member wasn't murdered no, you don't know what it is like and apparently you lack the empathy to appreciate that.

The notion that just a few years is going to make everything hunky-dory forgive-and-forget is, again, bullshit. It shows just what sort of ignorant, unemphatic tool you really are.

As far as fear in the community, there are couple who go on murder sprees every few years which commit as horrible crimes and in some cases get less time.

And in some cases they get just as much or are even executed. How is this relevant to this particular case?

Funny thing with you post is that I am willing to accept difference of opinion and think it is something worth debating.
I have respect those who disagree with me in a rational matter. Something that you seem unable or unwilling to do.

I am not willing to treat people with respect when they are unwilling to actually read what I write. And don't pull that "wah-wah-wah someone is using naughty words" defense, it doesn't work here.

[Thanas]

Just reading about the manson family crimes makes me suspect that most of them are irreperable lost souls best kept behind bars.

[mr friendly guy]

Do want to state one item as far as trusting professionals. Police consider confessions to be a gold standard but many psychologists have found that under pressure, false confessions are a real risk. There are plenty of professions in law enforcement that still believe in things like Satanic Ritual Abuse. There is nothing wrong with questioning something. Almost everybody on this forum are atheists and we likely question ministers even though they are the "professionals."

The problem here is, you want your cake and you want to eat it as well. On one hand you say that the Manson girls harmed themselves the most, yet on the other you say they could have been convicted based on false confession. If they gave a false confession under pressure it was hardly "self harm" and more likely a fault of either the police or the system.

You really need to pick a path and stick to it. Either the Manson girls were coerced into a false confession and hence a retrial is needed, not parole, or they were guilty and harmed themselves by their murderous actions, hence can be considered for parole.

I have been watching a show called "Wicked Attraction." There are plenty of cases where somebody will be convinced by somebody else into becoming a murderer, often a boyfriend / girlfriend. While some had bad childhoods, others had relatively normal childhoods and seemed to be decent people. Many were also young, just as young as the Manson women when they committed the crimes. I would argue that at a young age many people can be convinced into a life of violence.

I would argue that "many people being convinced into a life of violence" is simply a function of having a large population. Because the percentage of people who do Manson like killings are low.

I would also argue that a case could be made that the Manson Women hurt themselves the most. . . .
The death of those that killed, as horrible as they were, were comparatively brief.
I understand that one might have differences of opinion and I have no major problem with that.

Good grief listen to yourself. This should be obvious to people with empathy, but since you have problems lets try logic.

Their victims are dead, while the Manson women are alive.
Even if you think being alive in prison is worse than being dead, the Manson women clearly don't or else they would have killed themselves a long time ago.
Thus their victims who are dead, are in worse condition than the Manson women who are alive and happy to keep going like it.
Therefore the claim that the Manson women have hurt themselves the most is just rhetorical bullshit of the highest order.

Now, they are undoubtedly guilty of murder but I would argue in a case of wrongful conviction, the imprisonment of somebody for decades for a crime they did not commit, that is in many ways worse that the death of the individual murdered.

Since you don't think they were wrongfully convicted (based on your above sentence) why bring it up? Do you think imprisonment for decades is worse than death only if wrongfully convicted, or worse than death in general.

[Grumman]

I would also argue that a case could be made that the Manson Women hurt themselves the most. . . .
The death of those that killed, as horrible as they were, were comparatively brief.
I understand that one might have differences of opinion and I have no major problem with that.

I do have a major problem with that. You're an idiot if you buy into this "It's gonna hurt me a lot more than it hurts you" garbage with run-of-the-mill abuse, let alone some psycho who stabs people to death.

[Raw Shark]

And don't pull that "wah-wah-wah someone is using naughty words" defense, it doesn't work here.

Seriously. I was the one who originally called out the whole, "Waitaminute, surely you're not talking about Krenwinkel and Van Houten? Because they're fucking nuts?" thing. Read the posting rules and then answer me or concede, dishonest bloodthirsty motherfucker (aka: Kitsune).

[Raw Shark]

Just reading about the manson family crimes makes me suspect that most of them are irreperable lost souls best kept behind bars.

What is a matter of non-speculation, however, is that every single one of them who did not personally stab somebody to death is either free or dead now. The OP claim that "several" / "many" "Manson Girls" are still behind bars unfairly despite being model prisoners is either a really stupid mistake or a patently-false bullshit LIE, probably (I am charitably speculating) based on a very gullible reading of the single sympathetic article linked and not any real research, unless Kitsune is actually hypnotized by this murder cult shit or mentally retarded. There are exactly two people who could in any sense be described as "Manson Girls" still behind bars, and they were, with lots of evidence, the two craziest, most dangerous, irredeemable gleeful fucking psycho-killers in the bunch who did not have a penis; literally the definition of why we have life imprisonment. So which is it, Kitsune? Are you lying or stupid?

[lance]

(1) is an issue because we can't actually know one way or the other. The fraction of all people who join cults is quite small. Most people resist joining cults- they get bored and walk away, they listen to their friends who are telling them it's a mistake, they listen to an inner voice telling them that what the cult leader is saying can't be right.

Only a small minority of humans ever join a cult intense enough that it might kill. Or intense enough that it might commit suicide. Or intense enough that it might do anything drastic enough that we'd call it seriously abnormal.

What about the people who committed various genocides? They made up a larger portion of people, and are similar to death cults outside of scale.

[Replicant]

A lot of bad people can manage to behave themselves in jail which, less face it, is a far more regulated environment than the outside world.

They were sentenced to life. I'm happy at least a couple of them have found some worthwhile tasks while in jail, but I fail to see where their good deeds outweigh the multiple murders they committed.

I just want to add that it is perfectly azcceptable to me to disagree. . . .I consider this to be a hard issue.
I tend to consider that people can change and that the person 40 years down the line the person is not the same person.
Sometimes issues are not easy. Just trying to avoid viceral reactions.

The main problem is that the only way to really "know" if they should be released or not is to release them and basically play Russian Roulette with the lives of everyone around them until the day the girls die of whatever cause.

It is hard to convince people that letting some former psychopath free because it sounds like a good idea and we think it will turn out okay.

[Purple]

While we are on the topic of the Manson murders. I have to wonder just how much he was responsible for it all. And how dangerous it could possibly be if he was let out right now.

[Raw Shark]

While we are on the topic of the Manson murders. I have to wonder just how much he was responsible for it all.

Pretty responsible, according to the court system. It's been established by multiple testimonies that he was on the scene of and personally-directed the LaBianca murders, and is culpable through the Joint-responsibility rule regardless.

And how dangerous it could possibly be if he was let out right now.

Hard to say. On one hand, the guy is 79 years old and has reportedly been a model prisoner for decades. On the other, he has been diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder and his personal charisma is legendary, supposedly comparable to Hitler. Most accounts claim that he never personally killed anybody; he did all that just by talking to people.

[Purple]

Pretty responsible, according to the court system. It's been established by multiple testimonies that he was on the scene of and personally-directed the LaBianca murders, and is culpable through the Joint-responsibility rule regardless.

Reading that article is what actually got me thinking. The description of the trial there just seemed to be... I guess bad. I mean sure, my knowledge is limited to Wikipedia but reading that made me feel... well not as if they had the wrong guy. More that they really wanted to put him away and were willing to rush things through to make sure. Did I get the wrong impression?

Hard to say. On one hand, the guy is 79 years old and has reportedly been a model prisoner for decades. On the other, he has been diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder and his personal charisma is legendary, supposedly comparable to Hitler. Most accounts claim that he never personally killed anybody; he did all that just by talking to people.

I guess I just feel sorry for him. I mean, what's the point of keeping him in prison for so long? Especially if he is as you say a model prisoner.

[Broomstick]

I mean, what's the point of keeping him in prison for so long? Especially if he is as you say a model prisoner.

Well... if he's still a danger to society/others, then that's the point of keeping him in prison whether he's a model prisoner or not. Not to punish him more but to keep everyone else safe.

Second, being in prison isn't inherently a fate worse than death, and for people like Manson generally it's either life behind bars or execution. Most people in prison would rather be alive than dead, even if they're never getting out. Note that a life sentence is not necessarily solitary confinement for life, nor even usually that. Life in solitary is horribly cruel with rare exceptions such as Charles Harrelson who apparently liked being isolated for 23 hours a day. Then again, it's safe to say Mr. Harrelson was an unusual fellow.