November 20th, 2017 at 8:00 AM ^
is dead.
Seems like his fate was canned and sealed some time ago.
(Oh, now you edited and changed it to "Manson". I was wondering what you had against home canning.
Nevermind!)
November 20th, 2017 at 11:32 AM ^
Wouldn't want to know what ends up in a Charles Mason jar.
November 20th, 2017 at 7:47 AM ^
"Long time ago being crazy meant something, nowadays everybody's crazy!"
November 20th, 2017 at 10:20 AM ^
Laughing here. States the grown man with a cartoon avatar. Please don't tell me you still watch that show?
November 20th, 2017 at 11:05 AM ^
What makes you think I'm a grown man?
November 20th, 2017 at 7:48 AM ^
Good riddance, creep...
November 20th, 2017 at 11:27 AM ^
never really cared for that turd
November 20th, 2017 at 7:53 AM ^
Someone explain to me how he didn't get the death penalty. Is it because he personally didn't commit the murders?
November 20th, 2017 at 7:55 AM ^
Death penalty was outlawed in CA after he got sentenced.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:03 AM ^
did the State of California spend keeping him alive? One well placed inmate could have ended it long ago. Wisconsin took this approach with Jeffery Dahmer.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:34 AM ^
money spent? how about a very small fraction of what is spent each year keeping non-violent offenders locked up thanks to draconian minimum sentencing.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:04 AM ^
No doubt you are 100% correct.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:11 AM ^
Bravo to you, sir. +1
November 20th, 2017 at 11:16 AM ^
I dunno. It would be tempting to spend that money on infrastructure or educating my nieces but at the end of the day I can't think of anything more heinous and dangerous to American life than bonging weeds.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:45 AM ^
than a death sentence in my opinion. Given the choice, I'd take the shot.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:05 AM ^
He suffered much, much more by living than could have possibly suffered by being put to death IMO.
November 20th, 2017 at 11:01 AM ^
his time in prison was like a nice vacation.
November 20th, 2017 at 10:02 AM ^
then why do so many death sentence prisoners take an appeal to a higher court to try to prevent execution, and no life sentence prisoners take an appeal demanding to be killed
November 20th, 2017 at 10:27 AM ^
reasons.
1) It is something to do. Many prisoners just want something to pay attention to. An entire life staring at the wall and asking yourself over and over and over and over again "why couldn't I have just _____________" tends to become a little bothersome. Their legal proceeding is something to take their mind off that.
2) I think that it is easy to say you would rather just die than spend the rest of your life in prison until that is your reality. At that point, I think all living things have a primitive instinct to survive. Add to that, if you are a prisoner looking at the death penalty you have done something very bad, and all of the sudden the concept of hell becomes a little more real and a little less figurative.
3) I really don't think there is any legal mechanism to seek a "harsher" sentence than you received. At least not that I am aware of. I am sure you could argue it but it would be laughed out of court.
November 20th, 2017 at 11:09 AM ^
I don't think it's that simple. People do take their own lives in prison sometimes. Whether they're avoiding life in a box or abuse from other prisoners it tells me some people do prefer death to incarceration.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:03 AM ^
Approximately $40k per year, or about $1.9 million, not to mention the court-appointed lawyers' attorney fees.
I am not sure the Dahmer approach was state-sanctioned, but if it was, its legality seems dubious.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:38 AM ^
Dahmer and another inmate by the name of Jesse Anderson were both killed by a third inmate. Anderson had killed his wife and tried to blame it on black teenagers.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:58 AM ^
...the average costs of incarceration in California for both standard and death row inmates is available online. In total, it costs substantially more to prosecute, incarcerate and ultimately kill death row inmates that those serving life in prison.
November 20th, 2017 at 10:07 AM ^
It's counter intuitive for sure, but the death penalty ends up costing more money than a natural life sentence. It's not really close either, estimates I've seen are well over 10x the cost of a life sentence.
November 20th, 2017 at 12:24 PM ^
Actually, in many cases, it is more expensive to execute someone than it is to jail them for life. Also, you know, killing people is wrong.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:12 AM ^
California: opposed to corporal punishment even for the most vile murderers.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:28 AM ^
about your comment is that it can be taken both as praise or as condemnation, depending on the tone of the reader.
that said, no politics please!
November 20th, 2017 at 8:43 AM ^
He did. Then California got rid of the Death Penalty.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:06 AM ^
The California Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1976 but the voters brought it back a few months later. There have been a number of executions since then though none recently. I believe Manson might have benefited from a legal loophole given the cancellation and reinstatement of the law.
November 20th, 2017 at 9:19 AM ^
part of my old job was prosecuting those guys. it was reserved for what are called 'special circumstances' murders in which you had to prove not only that the murder was premediated and deliberate (a first degree murder), but also that there were certain special circumstances attendant to the murder. examples might be poisoning, torture, multiple murders, things like that.
November 20th, 2017 at 10:55 AM ^
example - The victim was your eight months pregnant wife who you were cheating on and you hit the road for the mexican border in disguise after throwing away all of her shit, ordering a bunch of porn, and buying a new truck like a week after the murders. That might be a *hypothetical* example of something that gets you the death penalty in CA.
November 20th, 2017 at 11:17 AM ^
that was another of the cases we handled.
the randy craft murders (64 killed) and the maniscalco case (hessian biker/assassins) were a couple of others. i actually testified in the maniscalco case. we did not ask for death in that case. excerpt here:
Everyone in Orange County law enforcement during the 1970s and ’80s knew about Tom Maniscalco – and that was before he was charged with three counts of murder.
He was one of the founders of the Hessians motorcycle gang who rode Harleys by day and went to law school by night in the 1960s.
After he passed the bar exam, Maniscalco defended his biker buddies in Orange County courts by day while running a meth and counterfeiting ring by night, according to court records.
And then he became a suspect in the May 1980 deaths of two former motorcycle gang members and the 19-year-old girlfriend of one of the victims. His case became one of the 60 featured in “Notorious OC,” an e-book published in 2012 by the Register about the most notorious criminal cases in the county’s history.
After 10 years in custody, Maniscalco was convicted on three counts of second-degree murder in 1994. He has been quietly serving a 46-years-to life term in prison.
November 20th, 2017 at 10:36 AM ^
The actual reason is the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional for a few years. When the USSC changed their minds, everyone who had been on death row could not be put back on it for double jeopardy reasons. I guess it would have hurt their feelings, or something.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:02 AM ^
a bunch of necrophiliacs.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:03 AM ^
To an all-time, low!
November 20th, 2017 at 8:07 AM ^
Good.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:13 AM ^
Thoughts and prayers
November 20th, 2017 at 9:28 AM ^
There, fixed it for you.
November 20th, 2017 at 1:03 PM ^
Well, we'll always have his music. That's some solace.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:13 AM ^
Not wanting to live in our world. Well, the feeling was mutual, and we both finally have what we wanted.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:25 AM ^
if this guy did what he did today it would hardly register on the national radar
November 20th, 2017 at 10:00 AM ^
Stealing Dennis Wilson’s gold record would certainly get a ton of coverage.
November 20th, 2017 at 8:32 AM ^
I think you missed a way
November 20th, 2017 at 8:37 AM ^
It's worth reading the NY Times obit. Many of us are too young to remember the Manson family and just have a hazy image of a crazy guy with a swastika on his forehead. The background is fascinating--provides a glimpse at a weird time and place in American history.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/obituaries/charles-manson-dead.html?…
November 20th, 2017 at 9:50 AM ^
by Vincent Bugliosi, the attorney who prosecuted the Manson case.
I recall reading Bugliosi's obituary when he passed away a couple years ago, that "Helter Skelter" is the all-time #1 best-selling true crime book. Didn't surprise me---when I first read it decades ago, I simply couldn't put the book down.
A must-read for anyone interested in learning a helluva lot more about the case.
Too bad Bugliosi didn't live long enough to hear of Manson's death.
November 20th, 2017 at 11:17 AM ^
Read this book when I was in 6th grade. I was a weird kid.