Sentencing/Post-Conviction
Manson Family Killer to Be Released? Longest-Serving Female Calif. Inmate
Posted Jun 13, 2008 12:32 PM CST
By Martha Neil
Susan Atkins, a member of the notorious so-called Charles Manson family group that killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others in a two-day spree in 1969, is dying and may soon be released from prison.
After 37 years, she is the longest-serving female inmate in the California prison system. Atkins, 59, who was also convicted of an earlier murder, is suffering from brain cancer and has had a leg amputated, reports the Los Angeles Times. Officials were asked to grant her "compassionate release," the newspaper says, because she has less than six months to live. She is eligible because she was sentenced to life, with the possibility of parole.
Although further approvals are still required before she can be released, the request has been okayed by the California Institution for Women in Corona, where she was held from 1971 until she was transferred to a local hospital in March, the newspaper writes. "Officials at the Corona facility concluded that Atkins should be considered for release because of her failing health and because she no longer posed a risk to others."
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Comments
karma
Jun 13, 2008 2:50 PM CST
“She is eligible because she was sentenced to life, with the possibility of parole.”
This woman was originally sentenced to death but California had overturned the death penalty and it was then that she was granted a life sentence. I think she should be grateful for her free room, meals, and access to healthcare. (Our taxes have paid for it) This is the same woman who killed a pregnant woman, her fetus, and her family, then proceeded to write “PIG” in their blood. I think we, as a nation, have been compassionate enough to this piece of filth.
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Sarah Ashley
Jun 13, 2008 6:23 PM CST
I agree!!!! Honestly we (the tax payers) have paid for her food, room, and hospital care!!!! Many hard working americans are not so lucky. Too bad your sick, the people you killed will never have the chance to even get sick. And if I may pose a few questions….What if she was a he? And what if he was Middle Eastern? Would we then still let him out?
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Compassionate Lawyer
Jun 16, 2008 5:22 PM CST
Unless they are mentally disturbed, have some other physical or psychological disorder, or are otherwise under the influence of some psychotrophic drug, no sane human being commits the kind of atrocities committed by the Manson “family” members. Prisons serve only three possible goals: to rehabilitate, to remove dangerous persons from society, or to take vengeance against the offender. Rehabilitation has been a failure in the U.S. and Susan Atkins no longer constitutes a threat to society. To keep her locked up for the remaining few months of her brain ravaged illness is simply taking further vengeance on a helpless individual. Her own failure to show compassion does not justify society’s lack of compassion. It only further impoverishes our own souls.
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