Posted on 07/03/2008 2:34:01 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Few if any murders carry the horrifying cachet of the Manson murders in 1969. The deaths of seven people on two nights at the end of a tumultuous decade combined all of the political and cultural baggage of the era — drugs, counterculture, celebrity, cults, and pure evil in the form of the perpetrators, especially Charles Manson himself. Combining mass murder and serial murder, the Manson Family has played on the imaginations of Americans for almost 40 years, while its members routinely apply for parole and get rejected.
Now one of them faces death, although much different in nature than the deaths she herself inflicted on her victims. Susan Atkins, probably the most committed of all the Tate/LaBianca murderers to Manson himself, has terminal brain cancer and is not expected to live out the year. She wants to be released so that she can die at home, presumably with family and friends. Matthew Schmalz asks in Newsweek whether mercy or retribution should take precedence (via Shaun Mullen):
Justice or mercy? That is the pressing question in what seems to be a coda in the story of the 1969 Manson family murders. At issue is the request by Susan Atkins, now 60, for compassionate release from prison on the grounds of terminal illness.
Apart from Charles Manson himself, Atkins was the public face of the Manson family during the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. She had bragged about mercilessly stabbing the pregnant Sharon Tate and laughed when details of the murders were presented in court. When she received a death sentence, the verdict seemed particularly appropriate. When her punishment was later changed to life imprisonment with possibility parole, it seemed to be a gross distortion of the justice process.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
I respectfully disagree. Sharon Tate wasn't allowed even the smallest of comforts as her life was taken from her. HER family never got the chance to say goodbye.
Even alone in prison, Atkins will experience a much easier death than her victims.
> I vote PRISON !!!
Actually, I’d like to change that to GALLOWS.
I want to stop wasting tax money on keeping her around.
She should stay in jail, but as I stated earlier, she should take a page from Tex and realize that she has done wicked things that deserve horrible punishment. I am just as capable of landing in hell as she is, I just hope she makes the right choice. Even if she does find God, no comfort should be given to her in this life, her punishment was delivered and it shall be served.
She needs to die in prison. Her family can visit her there.
So what you are saying is leave her in prison as she was sentenced to life. She makes her own peace, or not, regarding her crime. Is that correct?
In Prison, surround by death scene pictures of all the victims her and her cohorts murdered.
She has already been shown compassion by the taxpayers of California for having clothed and fed her for all these years, and for providing her health care during her illness. This is above and beyond what she deserves or what she offered Sharon Tate or her baby, and her asking for more “compassion” to leave prison now is further evidence of her evil, selfish, unrepentent nature.
She should have been given a much shorter life sentence.
She could choose dying while someone carves out her entrails. That’s how she killed Sharon Tate, isn’t it? While Sharon begged her to at least save the life of her unborn 8-month-old baby?
Why?
Yes.
In prison. Sorry.
That much is true, and while we are on the point, I think she should have been executed a long time ago.
I guess my point is that her friends and family (again, assuming she has any) were not responsible for her crimes. If they’re willing to drive up there at their own expense, go through the security checks to be with her when she dies, I don’t have a problem with that.
And, frankly speaking, I don’t have a problem if that is NOT allowed either. It’s not really much skin off my nose either way.
The operative point is no release. Life in prison should mean just that. They stay locked up until they die. Period.
Well, she hasn’t served out her sentence so releasing her would be a miscarriage of justice.
She was sentenced to death before she was erroneously awarded the gift of life in prison, so now she gets to see her sentence served to the letter.
Die in prison you piece of garbage and do it soon.
Oh I’d probably let her go home.
Sharon Tate begged for her baby’s life——ergo, this killer Atkins should get the same response Tate got.
Brain cancer seems like an apt conclusion to her miserable life——considering the brainlesss, thoughtless acts Atkins perpetrated on innocent people.
I hope she suffers great pain and that she lingers in her dank prison cell a long time.
The entire Manson gang should have been EXECUTED four decades ago. Atkins should die in prison. I don't say that because I have no compassion for Susan, but because I have more compassion for Sharon Tate and her unborn baby.
Justice should be served for Susan Atkins in this life. Mercy should be reserved for her in the next life if God chooses to give her any.
One or the other, yes.
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