CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2016, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NO PAROLES FOR MASS KILLERS, EVEN UNDER PROP. 57”
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2016, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NO PAROLES FOR MASS KILLERS, EVEN UNDER PROP. 57”
There was considerable irony when a
California parole review panel late on Oct. 27 – just 12 days before the fall
election – denied parole for the 17th time to Charles (Tex) Watson,
self-described “right hand man” of Charles Manson, participant in at least
seven of the Manson “Family” murders and leader of some of those murders.
Watson’s parole denial came even as
early voters were overwhelmingly backing the idea of eased paroles for
“non-violent” convicts, on the ballot as Proposition 57, even though some
clearly violent crimes are not legally classified as that. These include things
like soliciting murder and rape of an unconscious or dead person.
The Watson decision made it clear that
paroles mostly likely will continue to be anything but automatic, even if past
parole boards have tried to free several of Watson’s fellow Mansonites,
including the likes of knife-and-sword wielding Bruce Davis and Leslie van
Houten, who stabbed and held down some of the gang’s victims and then used
their blood to scrawl race-baiting slogans on walls.
Gov. Jerry Brown, who did more than
anyone else to push through Prop. 57, has repeatedly vetoed their proposed
paroles, saying at one point that “In rare circumstances, a murder is so
heinous that it provides evidence of current dangerousness by itself.” The
Manson gang’s murders, he said, fit into that category.
So even though Brown advocates
strongly for easing paroles and giving convicts incentives in the form of early
releases for good behavior and academic achievement while in prison, it’s clear
he makes exceptions for the most virulent murderers.
You can, therefore, expect the Grim
Sleeper (Lonnie Franklin Jr.), who killed at least 10 women between 1987 and
2002, to stay in jail a long, long time, even if he somehow evades the death
penalty recently ratified by voters who rejected the fall’s Proposition 62. The
same for former Arcata trucker Wayne Adam Ford, who killed four women and
dumped their body parts all around the state. And for onetime Yosemite-area
motel handyman Cary Stayner, who killed four persons, one of them a nature
guide whom he beheaded.
It’s a pretty sure bet Brown would
veto all their paroles, if they somehow escape execution and review boards ever
approve parole, because of the purely heinous quality of their crimes.
The real question, now that Prop. 57
is in place, will be whether governors coming after Brown, who leaves office in
just over two years, continue to understand the importance of making sure
prominent murderers and rapists remain behind bars for life, even if they
somehow evade the death sentences originally handed them, as many Manson Family
members managed. (Their sentences were commuted when the state Supreme Court
ruled executions unconstitutional in the 1970s, a stance later reversed by the
U.S. Supreme Court.)
Brown remembers the Manson murders
well, as some of them (actress Sharon Tate and others killed and mutilated by
Watson and friends) occurred only two canyons over from where he then lived in
Laurel Canyon among the Santa Monica Mountains near Hollywood.
Some academics and others who oppose
the death penalty as inhumane contend the prospect of executions does not deter
crime. But no one knows what some prospective killers might do if they come to
understand they can eventually be freed again, while their victims remain dead.
One Manson Family juror (now deceased)
told this column in 1995 (more than 20 years after that trial) that he never
regretted voting for the death penalty. “I can still see the gruesome pictures
of the Manson victims like Sharon Tate and Shorty Shea and Leno and Rosemary
LaBianca; they come into my mind. It’s like I can still see their wounds.”
For that juror, family members of the
victims and others who visited the Manson crime scenes, it’s important that
Manson and his minions never get the freedom they denied their bloodied
victims. It’s the same for victims of other vicious criminals who may now
appear benign after years in prison.
Not even Prop. 57 and its eased
paroles currently threatens to loose such convicts upon the public. But keeping
the feet of each new governor to the fire remains important, for the victims
and what they and their families and friends lost should never be forgotten.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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