Commuted Sentences and Retrial
No Manson case defendant was ever executed. Their sentences were among those commuted to life imprisonment when the state of California temporarily outlawed the death penalty on February 18, 1972, in the case of California v. Anderson.
In 1976, Leslie Van Houten's murder conviction in the Tate-LaBianca trial was overturned by a state appellate court on the grounds that Judge Older erred in not granting Van Houten's motion for a mistrial following the disappearance of her attorney, Ronald Hughes (Hughes' badly decomposed body was found in early 1971. He was allegedly murdered by Manson family members). Van Houten's first retrial ended in a hung jury. Released on bond for a few months, Van Houten lived with a former writer for the Christian Science Monitor. She was tried a third time in 1978, and convicted of first degree murder after the jury rejected her defense of diminished capacity as the result of prolonged use of hallucinogenic drugs.
Read more about this topic: Leno And Rosemary LaBianca
Famous quotes containing the words commuted and/or sentences:
“The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had ordered his punishment commuted to imprisonment ... and had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.”
—Richard Rorty (b. 1931)