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 ...
Justice can only be served if she remains in prison.
Prison.
At home...which is prison.
She should die with her belly and her neck slit wide open, just like her victims. And a city dump would be as good a place as any. Just torch the body and mix the dust in with all the other trash.
She wants to be released so that she can die at home, presumably with family and friends
1) HELL NO, she needs to die in prison, 2) she has no friends and 3) if the state lets her out, it will open the door, literally, for other prisoners who are either getting old and/or dying in prison. If they let out Atkins, who will be next, Manson, himself???
Not an issue worth dwelling on, she will be dead.
She should die in prison and then go meet her maker.
This shouldn’t even be up for discussion, not for such a heinous crime.
She needs to die in prison. This woman deserves precious little compassion.
Absolutley, positively,,,,,,,,,,PRISON,,,,,no comforts for this murderer,,,,,,,give her just what she gave her victims..........NO CHOICE
Please Susan Atkins, just hurry up and die. The sooner the better. Good riddance!
Hand her a pistol and let her off herself; OR, stay in jail and rot away until dead.
She belongs behind bars until her last breath is taken.
Prison until she reaches her hospice stage....then release her for her final few days or weeks.
I'm willing to go with whatever she says.
I couldn’t agree more.
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