The Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles ruled 2-1 yesterday that Leslie Van Houten, one of the Manson cult members who murdered Leno LaBianca, an LA grocer and his wife, Rosemary in 1969, should be released from prison on parole. The ruling reverses an earlier decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who rejected parole for Van Houten in 2020. Van Houten was 19 at the time of the LaBianca murders. She has been recommended for parole five times since 2016. Newsom’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, rejected the first set of paroles; Newsome has continued the pattern.
Now Van Houten is 73, still serving a life sentence .Newsom has said that she still poses a danger to society, which seems ridiculous. The court stated that there is “no evidence to support the Governor’s conclusions” about Van Houten’s fitness for parole. “Van Houten has shown extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, favorable institutional reports, and, at the time of the Governor’s decision, had received four successive grants of parole,” the judges wrote. “Although the Governor states Van Houten’s historical factors ‘remain salient,’ he identifies nothing in the record indicating Van Houten has not successfully addressed those factors through many years of therapy, substance abuse programming, and other efforts.”
Newsom can still request that California Attorney General Rob Bonta petition the state Supreme Court to stop her release. The real question is whether one believes in rehabilitation or not. Hers was certainly a horrible crime. Van Houten and other cult members carved up Leno LaBianca’s body and smeared the couple’s blood on the walls of their home the day after other Manson followers, not including Van Houten, slaughtered pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in one of the most infamous mass murders in U.S. history.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is...
Should Leslie Van Houten be paroled?
I believe that all of the participants in the Tate and LaBianca murders deserved the death penalty, including Charles Manson. But it is clear that the Leslie Van Houten who is alive today is not the same woman who committed the crime that sent her to prison. Since she was sentenced to life in prison but with a chance at parole, doesn’t pardoning her now seem consistent with that sentence? Essentially her whole life has been taken from her. “There is no reason whatsoever to keep her behind bars except for the politics and optics of it,” says Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC College of the Law.
No reason?
I am genuinely torn on the question. I do think that if she had the words and the wit, the statement made by “Red” (Moran Freeman) in his parole hearing from “The Shawshank Redemption” might apply to Van Houten as well:
Ethics Alarms 
Life in prison should mean life in prison. Some crimes are just so bad that the person who committed them should never be allowed to rejoin society. I think Charles Manson is the most undeserving recipient of the mercy that came with the temporary abolition of the death penalty whoever existed. I also think his followers, who, young as they might have been, we’re still old enough to be responsible for their actions deserved the same fate.
Don’t get me wrong, 54 years in prison is a damn long time. It’s longer than I’ve been alive, and the idea of spending all that time staring at concrete is very unpleasant. However, the families of those victims who were butchered should not have to see this person walking around free. Too often the victims and their families get forgotten in all of this. The victims here did not a thing. It isn’t as though they had bad blood with the offenders or had done something to the offenders. This is a case of someone who is as close to evil as any human ever was working his spell over other humans who let him work his spell on them and using that control to destroy lives who he really had nothing to do with and no reason to destroy. This is also a case of individuals who could still tell the difference between right and wrong choosing to go as wrong as any human possibly could. I say let this woman rot in prison for the rest of her days, I believe she should only be released if she is in the throes of a terminal disease and doesn’t have very long to live. Then by all means, release her to die.
Steve-O-in-NJ wrote, “Life in prison should mean life in prison. Some crimes are just so bad that the person who committed them should never be allowed to rejoin society.”
I completely agree.
In my opinion, sentencing criminals needs to be fixed not fluid for “good behavior” or being “rehabilitated”. Have some kind of incentives within the prison system, like moving to less restrictive prisons (maximum vs medium vs minimum vs farm, etc), for those that exhibit good to exceptionally good behaviors but they must serve their entire time. Abolish parole and parole boards; 5 years means 5 years, 10 years means 10 years, 20 years means 20 years, etc, etc… all the way up to life means LIFE. Period.
We send criminals to prison to isolate them from an otherwise lawful and peaceful society, rehabilitation is a secondary benefit, if it happens. Prison has a culture and society all its own that can twist a persons reasoning sometimes more than the piss poor reasoning that got them there in the first place. Prison can also be a place full of intimidation and violence and knowingly releasing an inmate that has served their time but has shown continual pattern of violence within the prison culture is wrong, the problem is what do you do with inmates such as this once they have served their time.
Here’s another video statement made by “Red” (Moran Freeman) in “The Shawshank Redemption” about being “institutionalized” by prison.
A correlation may be to look how long it takes some of the United States combat infantry personnel to adjust to non-military non-combat society after serving in very stressful life or death combat for extended periods of time, I have some close personal friends that have issues with this.
I don’t know all the answers but I’m of the opinion that all prison sentences handed down to criminals should be served in full; let Leslie Van Houten die in prison.
I agree with Steve on the emotional side of me but the from a practical side, the cost to keep her locked up is approaching 35K per year. Punishing the perpetrator is one thing but this is approaching punishing the taxpayer so a few can have their pound of flesh from the criminal.
I don’t advocate for reallocating resources away from criminal justice activities but there could be a need to reallocate those resources to house more of today’s violent offenders for longer terms.
There is also a cost to society when you reduce the penalties for serious crimes, though. How much do you reduce the penalties? At what point do the penalties stop being deterrents to commit serious crimes? When do the punishments stop being harsh enough to prevent vigilantism against the perpetrators?
I agree it costs a lot to keep a thrill killer in jail, but that is also an argument for the death penalty.
Or for the cops popping the bad guy at the scene and saying he resisted arrest if there isn’t a death penalty.
NP
We would not have to ask this question if many of us had our way.
Personally, I would like to see those forty or more thugs that ganged up to attack the Marines on Memorial Day be strung up so we can stone them to death.
The easy, calloused response to that is that the death penalty (deserved, certainly) is much cheaper at fits the crime.
At some point, with your argument, is that we also put a value on the victim’s life.
Is the life of your loved one brutally taken only worth x amount of dollars worth of incarceration?
Rehabilitated or not still doesn’t replace the value of the life lost, for the family or society.
It wasn’t manslaughter, it was terrible, brutal murder. Van Houten gave up her life when she purposely took anothers.
Aviram can advocate for Van Houten’s release without pretending there is no reason to keep her locked up. Retribution is a reason.
The parent in me – the one who understands quite well that the human brain is not fully developed until our mid-20’s, the one who thought she knew everything at 19 yet whose own children were clearly as dumb as a box of rocks when they were 19 – wonders what the benefit is of continuing to imprison a 73 year old woman for what a 19 year old girl did. A 19 year old, mind you, that was under the spell of a charismatic, psychopathic 35 year old Manson.
Of course, one should know not to commit murder at 19. I’m not excusing her actions. I would venture to say that a 19 year old also has no concept of what a life prison sentence looks like when committing those actions; what it really, truly means day after day, year after year for the rest. of. one’s. life.
I don’t have an answer.
Neither do I. But the power of cults and charismatic cult leaders to warp young people with weak character, lack of self-esteem and a no stable upbringing should not be underestimated.
Tough call.
If I were in charge of the decision, I may agree to parole after speaking to her, seeing her, and deciding based on the interview what to do. Then again, I may not. It depends.
In mitigation, no doubt her prison performance was commendable, but no amount of atonement can erase the terrible crime she committed.
In aggravation, the acts of the Manson “family” give an example of why we should have the death penalty everywhere, and why it should be enforced. That’s a strong argument against mercy.
So I don’t know. Let me sit down with her for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and perhaps I would have the answer. Since that isn’t going to happen, I hope for the judges involved to be fair, and perhaps the decision, whatever it is, will be correct.
At least with time her photographs are starting to make her less menacing. Her 1999 mugshot on Wikipedia simply screams of “hardened criminal”. The one upside from a societal perspective for her time in prison is that the ravages of time have had the effect of forced sterilization and she won’t be reproducing – so there’s at least 1 life sentence carried out.
Is it a problem that we have one justice system for a wide variety of crimes? People like Bernie Madoff who ruin thousands of lives and impact millions more. He wasn’t a physical threat to anyone so segregating him from society wasn’t about public safety, but it was about putting him in time out to consider what he did. Did all of his accomplices get rounded up? Probably not every last one: some people caught a lucky break. When that happens, you realize prosecutorial discretion is based on numerous factors, including ability/capacity, evidence, and perception. Once the prosecutor feels satisfied with frying the main culprits and new cases are in need of attention, lots of people get off scot-free.
So what’s the right answer with LVH? Honestly, I think the family is fighting so hard for her because they think there’s still a life to salvage, and at 73 years old, knowing how well my parents and aunts and uncles have aged, I tend to agree. She has too much life in her to allow her to walk out now. I think time is still owed, if only another 5 years. Maybe at that time, there won’t be much of a life to salvage.
You reminded me of Nathan Leopold, who was released from a life sentence after committing, while a bit older than Leslie was, an equally heinous murder, also under the influence of a “Svengali.” (He only killed one person, but it was a little boy, and he had no reason at all. Manson was trying to start a race war. I don’t see a record of much uproar over Leopold’s release. Is the difference just the intensity of the media coverage in 1968 as opposed to 1925? By any realistic standard, Van Houten is less of a threat than Leopold was. He had family money, and was 54 when he was paroled, after only 33 years of a life plus 99 year sentence.
I love that scene from Shawshank, and it was forefront in my mind when I commented on the insanity in New York .
On a very clinical level, if the sentence is life with possibility of parole, then parole should be a real possibility, not something dangled before an inmate with no intention of ever actualizing. If certain criteria have to be met to qualify for parole, that should be explicit, and anyone recommending parole should have the ability to make the case that all those criteria have been met. I’m sure there are gray areas, such as “Did the inmate truly demonstrate remorse?”
One of the reasons I really like Red’s speech before the parole board is how earnest it is, and is not based upon whether or not he actually gains parole. But what makes it effective before the audience is seeing his previous parole hearings, what he had to say then, and in part, how his life was changed by Andy Dufrense. This leads me to conclude that the best people to determine if someone has properly shown remorse are people who have walked alongside the inmate (counsellors, guards, fellow inmates) for the duration of incarceration. A governor who has not been involved up until the parole request comes across his desk has little information to work with. He probably knows the case, he probably gets letters from the victims’ families, and there are probably political factors that will motivate him, but all he has about the current state of the inmate is the report recommending parole.
I personally have to believe rehabilitation is possible, or there is no such thing as God’s grace that can transform even the worst of sinners into saints. I think the case of Maria Goretti’s murderer, Alessandro Serenelli, is evidence that rehabilitation is possible.
One thing I will agree with is that rehabilitation does not necessitate release from prison. Rehabilitation does not require a reduction in sentence. Some crimes do require a strict penalty that forfeit life outside of prison, because society needs that debt paid and it needs that deterrent to keep others from committing that crime. Indeed, as Null Pointer said, and as we’ve seen in New York and other cities, there is a price to be paid in society at large when penalties are reduced. In this case, though, I would argue that the penalty is not being reduce if Van Houten is paroled, because the option of parole was apparently built into her sentence.
So does Van Houten deserve parole? No. I would say that given her sentence is initially for life, with possibility of parole, there is nothing she can do to deserve parole. But given that the possibility of parole exists, and that as far as society is concerned, murder has the lowest of all recidivism rates, the claim that Van Houten is somehow an unacceptable risk falls flat. It isn’t like parole means she simply walks free. It means she’ll serve out the remainder of her sentence under the watch of a parole officer, with all the restrictions that come in terms of living arrangements, employment, alcohol and drug use, approved visitors, and even a rigorous schedule she has to adhere to, depending upon her level of supervision.
I vote for her parole.
And yes, Steve-O, she can come live in the house next to door to me.
Great job, Ryan.Comment of the Day.
(shrug) Your choice.
I’m going to be using the royal “you” in this a lot, but I basically agree with Ryan, and those “you”s aren’t at him. That said, I’ve lost patience for stupidity and empty performative gestures and language, and this is a great representative example of the sentiment on the issue I have problems digesting:
“Some crimes do require a strict penalty that forfeit life outside of prison, because society needs that debt paid and it needs that deterrent to keep others from committing that crime.”
These words aren’t meaningful. They’re truisms at best, and bumper stickers at worst. They’re the kind of thing that people say to placate unreasonable people. I really think that Americans generally, and several people in here particularly, need to do a little more thinking and soul searching on the topic of incarceration, and what the words they’re saying actually mean.
Here’s some words to think about:
“needs that deterrent”
Does anyone actually believe that this acts like a deterrent?
Really. Responses to this *have* to answer this question first. Does anyone actually believe that making the “with chance of parole” from Houten’s sentence meaningless has any effect on crime rates? Even a single one? What would that even look like?
Does anyone actually believe that if Houten were paroled, the dam would break and the system would be flooded with cult murders from people who took the leniency of a 50 year sentence as permission to release their worst demons? Even a single one? What would that even look like?
Does anyone actually believe that if America had locked up 100 more murderous women until they died at the ripe old age of 112 that Manson and his cult wouldn’t have committed the crimes that they did? How many would it have taken?
Does anyone actually believe her continuing sentence acts like a deterrent?
I certainly don’t. And if no one does, then what the actual fuck was that sentence supposed to mean and to whom was that meaning conveyed to?
How about a few more words:
“Needs that debt be paid”
What does that even mean in this context? How does one do that? What’s the debt, what’s the currency, at what rate is it paid? When is it over? I have a little more patience for this one than I did the last, because there’s going to be a sliding scale back in time. I obviously think Houton should be paroled. When she should have been paroled is an interesting question. And it’s one reasonable people could have.
The thing is, I don’t think anyone that would say that there’s a debt that still needs to be paid in this context actually believes that the debt can ever be paid. If ever there was a case where the argument could be made that enough was enough, it’s this one. So why talk at all in terms of debt and payment when all you can’t possible actually care about said “debt”.
What are you actually saying, and who are you really trying to convince?
This post is fast approaching the EA record for most COTD-level responses, and I’m trying to figure out how to deal with them all without starting a new website….
HT – your comment really resonates with me. I don’t know if you remember when the 3 Girl Scouts and a mom were killed while picking up trash on the side of a highway. The driver of the truck that killed them was my son’s classmate. He was given a 54 year prison sentence. He will be 75 years old before he is released. Both the driver and my son are now 25 years old. I look at my son (who, incidentally, is a corrections officer) and I see the limitless potential of his life, of everything he is capable of doing, building, learning, and experiencing; a life he can’t conceive of yet, at only 25. We know the life of the driver. We know exactly what his next 50 years look like. And like my son, I’m sure he can’t conceive of it.
I’m not excusing what he did. And there must be punishment when one causes utter devastation to the lives of others. There must be. There is a part of me that grieves for his lost life as well. And I wonder, when the time comes, when he is wrinkled, and gray, and a little stooped over, if people will say enough is enough. Will a 75 year old man have paid for what he did when he was young, and stupid, and reckless?
Again, I don’t know the answer.
And that’s exactly it… Obviously some kind of punishment is necessary, but does it really make sense to hold him for the rest of his life? Is the public actually being protected? Is there actually an expressible interest here? Or are we just spending tax dollars being callous and cruel? There’s a great conversation around the idea of “at what point is the message sent?” and maybe it isn’t a small amount of time. But it’s not “after they’re dead” either.
Unless the point is just punishment. I would love to hear from anyone insisting that geriatrics serving hard time for stupid crimes they did when they were stupid kids how this is anything but punishment for punishment’s sake. Explain to me, very clearly, how this isn’t just the lowest of low-brow, eye-for-an-eye retribution porn.
To me, what the driver did was negligent not malicious. And his negligence had the moral luck of killing people. But a driver who isn’t paying attention and goes off the road and comes back on the road *is equally as bad* as the driver who isn’t paying attention and goes off the road and kills people.
I get the societal impulse to increase the penalty for the latter since people died – yet both the former and the latter were committing the same error.
My gut tells me that we probably don’t punish negligence that doesn’t result in harm as harshly as we ought to and probably punish negligence that does result in harm more harshly than we ought to. Philosophically it’s a tough call because I want to assume that someone who harms someone accidentally probably still has the kind of conscience that bearing the burden of the harm committed acts as a punishment enough and society is only obligated to punish the negligence.
But, I’ve also seen plenty of sociopaths who think they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong after killing people while impaired (which is a type of negligence).
I think genuine signs of remorse are 100% useful in judging negligence.
For Houten? Is a batty-headed and impressionable teenager who was never imparted a conscience by her parent acting negligently or maliciously?
In the case of my son’s classmate: it didn’t help that he and his buddy had been huffing while behind the wheel, hid the truck afterwards, and went to a party his mom was attending so he could tell her what had happened. I can’t imagine he’ll make those same choices at 75. At least, I hope not.
That certainly complicates things but even then juveniles are very stupid so does even that pattern of behavior rise to malice or still realm of negligence?
I posted an RA Heinlein passage below. I left out a snippet prior where one of the students discussed parents being punished alongside children who engage in miscreance. I wouldn’t know how that would work in society but it definitely points at the real problem of young criminals.
HT,
Let me at least try to explain what I mean when I use these phrases you feel are empty performative gestures.
“Society needs that debt paid, and it needs that deterrent to keep others from committing that crime.”
When a wrong is committed, be it an official crime or some other unethical behavior, it does not happen in vacuum, nor is it a private affair between two people. It is an evil inflicted on society. This comes from humans being societal creatures. Maybe you could argue that someone committing an unethical action on a deserted island that no one else will ever visit might escape that. I would still argue that that does inflict harm, but in this case, I’ll limit my scope to societies and the people obviously within them.
Society is a contract, and committing even legal unethical behaviors breaks that contract to one degree or another. That is why when legal unethical behavior starts to become the norm, more restrictive and more punitive laws tend to spring up in its wake. Now, there have to be penalties for breaking a contract, else it is no contract at all, but wishful thinking. That is why we say that someone who has behave unethically incurs a debt against society. The contract has been broken, the penalties must be applied in order to restore the integrity of the contract. The breaker of the contract has an obligation to pay the debt that restores the integrity of the contract.
How one pays that debt over time has been subject to change and reevaluation. We developed an ethic that suggests the debt to be paid should be proportionate to the crime. The idea expressed in ancient times of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was novel in that it limited retribution. We’ve seen in other times what happens when the principle is “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.” Violence escalates, and society is fractured. But we’ve also seen what happens when the principle is to waive all debts, or insist on the merest hand slap in repayment. In the lack of teeth in the social contract, the contract is ignored, and society fractures. So what we have is a quest over time to find the appropriate debt for each infraction.
I think when we ponder this framework, we find that what I said falls naturally from it as a logical conclusion. The real question is not whether society needs the debt repaid, but what the size of that debt is, and how much it takes to repay it. It should also be apparent that by placing teeth into the societal contract, it discourages people from breaking it. It is a cost-benefit analysis. I would prefer to live with the benefits of society, so I ought to follow the code of the contract. It may be that I reach a conclusion that there is something I want more than the benefits of society, and that can only be attained by a breach of the society contract. Perhaps I find refusing to burn incense to Caesar in order to worship YHWH so important that I’ll refuse to follow the decree from the Emperor. Or maybe I don’t fear breaking the contract because I’ve made a determination that the chances of being caught and forced to pay the penalties are too small to fear. In either case, I better be willing to accept the penalties when they are applied to me.
So these are not truisms. These are bedrock principles from which flow our general analysis of Van Houten’s situation. Do I believe that life in prison is a deterrent? I certainly do. Most people do not exhibit heroic virtues in which they will follow what is right regardless of what society permits. I think we’re seeing in many places, for example, what happens when a recreational drug is legalized. More people start using it. I think we’re seeing what happens when petty shoplifting isn’t penalized. So many people engage in it that stores have to close, or take expensive measures to keep all merchandise under lock and key. I don’t believe that murderers are going to murder, regardless of the law. I believe that a great many murderers walk among us, except that the law has prevented them from doing so. Can I prove that? Maybe I can cite the inner cities where murder rates are highest, and law enforcement presence is the lowest. Maybe I can cite that many mass shootings occur in so-called gun-free zones. Maybe I’m convinced because of a conversation I overheard, where a fellow on probation was stating how he hated concealed carry laws, because that made it impossible to tell if the guy he was going to mug had a gun. If the law has teeth, people commit fewer crimes.
Does making the “with chance of parole” in Van Houten’s sentence meaningless have any effect on crime rates? I don’t think so, because we’re looking at one single case. The deterrent effect comes from the application of the penalties in aggregate. And we have to accept that, because some criminals will never get caught, and some who are caught will walk, and some who are imprisoned will only be imprisoned on lesser charges. But the contract maintains a degree of integrity as long as it works “enough”. After that is the trial-and-error effort to determine how often “enough” is enough.
Thus, if parole were perpetually denied to large percentage of cases where parole is a possibility, it would have a deterring effect on crime rates. Would it be statistically significant? I can’t say. Would it be worth the cost? Possibly not. Because one of the other aspects I haven’t discussed yet is that society is will forgive some debts because it simply finds the cost of collecting those debts is too high. That is why many unethical behaviors are not illegal. Society could try to make them illegal, but policing them might be untenable, or prosecuting them might be unworkable. Going back to the legalizing of a recreational drug, some parts of society have decided that the costs of enforcing the illegality of the drug is simply too high to maintain. We might find later that actually damage done by legalization is much higher, or we might find that the damage done by legalization is within tolerance. That doesn’t make partaking in that recreational drug an ethical or harmless activity. It just means society decided the debts were too small to be worth collecting.
Does anyone believe that Van Houten’s continuing sentence acts like a deterrent? Again, individually no, but in the aggregate, yes. This is one of those situations where no single raindrop is responsible for the flood, but all of them together are. You can make the deterrent argument for every single individual case by examining them in isolation. But if you granted leniency in every one of those cases, then the deterrent has been removed.
This brings me to the final point, which comes back to the concept of rehabilitation. When someone commits a wrong, it isn’t society alone that is harmed. It isn’t the victim alone that is harmed. The wrongdoer hurts himself by acting wrongly. It wounds him at the very least by giving him a precedent to follow. This wound has to be healed. One means of doing so is through punishment, which strives to inflict suffering that will detach one from his desire to act similarly in the future. Punishment also seeks to engender remorse. Maybe it will not be true contrition, but even a self-serving, “I’m sorry I have to suffer like this” is a step in the right direction. When one can demonstrate at least imperfect contrition and a willingness to avoid his actions in the future, then rehabilitation becomes possible.
The problem with excessive punishment is that it is counterproductive. When one knows that his punishment is disproportionate to his crime, he can slip into the role (in his mind) of a martyr, and become stubbornly opposed to any rehabilitation. Or worse, he decides that if he is going to be treated as monster worse than his crimes actually show, he might as well be that monster.
This all takes a great deal to flesh out, but I hope I have at least advanced the discussion a little bit.
Again… I agree more than I disagree. But then there’s things like this:
“When a wrong is committed, be it an official crime or some other unethical behavior, it does not happen in vacuum, nor is it a private affair between two people. It is an evil inflicted on society. This comes from humans being societal creatures.”
I know that what you mean is that there’s more than just the victim effected, but we’re talking against the backdrop of Houten’s possibility of parole, and you specifically mentioned the word “deterrent”. In that context, I think this is obtuse.
What does “deterrent” mean in this context? What does that even look like? The reality is that no amount of prior convictions or tough sentences would have dissuaded the cultists (unless you actually believe that) and her sentence does not stand in the breach of future cultists (unless you actually believe that), and even considering normal, run-of-the-mill murder: I have very serious doubts that before the average murderer murders, they sit down and do a cost-benefit analysis on whether or not they’d serve 40 years or 54 or actual life as a result of their actions (unless you actually believe that).
Deterrence only goes so far. There would almost certainly be more murder if we didn’t punish murderers at all. But even when the sentence for murder is death, people still murder. There is a point where the punishment stops being a deterrent.
“I think when we ponder this framework, we find that what I said falls naturally from it as a logical conclusion. The real question is not whether society needs the debt repaid, but what the size of that debt is, and how much it takes to repay it. It should also be apparent that by placing teeth into the societal contract, it discourages people from breaking it. It is a cost-benefit analysis.”
Sure. I completely agree with the statement, but I have to wonder if you actually believe it and it isn’t an empty platitude. Because, again, the reality of Houton’s case asserts itself. It’s easy enough to say these words, but rubber has to hit the road eventually…If 54 years of incarceration accompanied by all the mitigation in Houton’s case isn’t enough to consider parole, then what would be?”
“So these are not truisms. These are bedrock principles from which flow our general analysis of Van Houten’s situation. Do I believe that life in prison is a deterrent? I certainly do.”
But do you believe it… here.
“Most people do not exhibit heroic virtues in which they will follow what is right regardless of what society permits. I think we’re seeing in many places, for example, what happens when a recreational drug is legalized. More people start using it. I think we’re seeing what happens when petty shoplifting isn’t penalized. So many people engage in it that stores have to close, or take expensive measures to keep all merchandise under lock and key.”
Again… What are you even responding to? Or what do you think this adds? Do you think I’m arguing that we should legalize cult murders?
“I don’t believe that murderers are going to murder, regardless of the law. I believe that a great many murderers walk among us, except that the law has prevented them from doing so. Can I prove that? Maybe I can cite the inner cities where murder rates are highest, and law enforcement presence is the lowest. Maybe I can cite that many mass shootings occur in so-called gun-free zones. Maybe I’m convinced because of a conversation I overheard, where a fellow on probation was stating how he hated concealed carry laws, because that made it impossible to tell if the guy he was going to mug had a gun. If the law has teeth, people commit fewer crimes.”
Does making the “with chance of parole” in Van Houten’s sentence meaningless have any effect on crime rates? I don’t think so, because we’re looking at one single case. The deterrent effect comes from the application of the penalties in aggregate. And we have to accept that, because some criminals will never get caught, and some who are caught will walk, and some who are imprisoned will only be imprisoned on lesser charges. But the contract maintains a degree of integrity as long as it works “enough”. After that is the trial-and-error effort to determine how often “enough” is enough.”
I think we might actually just honestly disagree here, but much of what you described as a deterrence wasn’t actually a legal deterrent. It’s not the law in action if the fellow you’re robbing shoots you, although the self defense might be legal. Not knowing how soft a target is isn’t a legal deterrent. What you described as a deterrence was death or the possibility of death, not the difference between 50 and 60 years in jail. Even then – Deterrence only goes so far and there is a point where it ceases to be deterrence. There was a time when the death penalty was much more common, it did not deter all murder. Even if you could infinitely make the law more “toothy” you will never mitigate all murder.
What frustrates me a little is how close you get sometimes. I’m on record: America over-incarcerates. More people are in jail because more things are illegal in America, more laws require jail time, and your sentences are longer. Now, to be fair… You also have a violence problem. But think about that for a moment. You have some of the strictest and most punishing laws in the developed world. Period. Some people might be proud of that, or think it’s good and necessary. But the results are shit. Even before the latest slew of progressive insanity, which I agree is insane, America was always disproportionately violent despite your laws and punishments. Square that with the theory of “deterrence”.
It’s almost like you can’t fix a problem by throwing more for-profit prisons at it.
“Does anyone believe that Van Houten’s continuing sentence acts like a deterrent? Again, individually no, but in the aggregate, yes. This is one of those situations where no single raindrop is responsible for the flood, but all of them together are. You can make the deterrent argument for every single individual case by examining them in isolation. But if you granted leniency in every one of those cases, then the deterrent has been removed.”
Aggregate with…. What, exactly? The dozens of people who have served 50 year sentences as model inmates? Parole is personal. It is individualized. You don’t have to grant parole in every single case. You don’t even have to grant parole in most cases. But if there was ever a case where it made sense to grant parole, it’s this one. Arguing against it is, in fact, arguing against the entire system of parole and leniency.
“This brings me to the final point, which comes back to the concept of rehabilitation. When someone commits a wrong, it isn’t society alone that is harmed. It isn’t the victim alone that is harmed. The wrongdoer hurts himself by acting wrongly. It wounds him at the very least by giving him a precedent to follow. This wound has to be healed. One means of doing so is through punishment, which strives to inflict suffering that will detach one from his desire to act similarly in the future. Punishment also seeks to engender remorse. Maybe it will not be true contrition, but even a self-serving, “I’m sorry I have to suffer like this” is a step in the right direction. When one can demonstrate at least imperfect contrition and a willingness to avoid his actions in the future, then rehabilitation becomes possible.
The problem with excessive punishment is that it is counterproductive. When one knows that his punishment is disproportionate to his crime, he can slip into the role (in his mind) of a martyr, and become stubbornly opposed to any rehabilitation. Or worse, he decides that if he is going to be treated as monster worse than his crimes actually show, he might as well be that monster.”
Incredibly interesting pronoun usage. Who are you talking about? Let’s focus back of Houten. Does any of that really apply?
Gah, typos. The most egregious – I have no idea how I wrote this:
“It’s easy enough to say these words, but rubber has to hit the road eventually… And if 54 years before parole accompanies by all the mitigation in Houton’s case, then when would it be. Again… What does this look like in reality?”
“If 54 years [of incarceration] accompanie[d] by all the mitigation in Houton’s case [isn’t enough to consider parole], then [what] would be?”
I’ll fix that. Again, I’m sorry we don’t have an edit function in comments.
Or I cud lern to type goods.
You already type better than I does.
As you have probably discerned, I agree with you (and Ryan) regarding Van Houten, though if she had been just a wee bit older, I would have been quite comfortable with executing her at the outset. But I have to comment on this:
I’m on record: America over-incarcerates. More people are in jail because more things are illegal in America, more laws require jail time, and your sentences are longer. Now, to be fair… You also have a violence problem. But think about that for a moment. You have some of the strictest and most punishing laws in the developed world. Period. Some people might be proud of that, or think it’s good and necessary. But the results are shit. Even before the latest slew of progressive insanity, which I agree is insane, America was always disproportionately violent despite your laws and punishments. Square that with the theory of “deterrence”.
Tell me what is illegal in the US that shouldn’t be? America doesn’t over-incarcerate at all—it under-convicts. I saw stats last week showing that only 50% of murders are ever solved now. yes, America is disproportionately violent, has been and will be—that’s part of the culture’s DNA. The more violent criminals that are convicted and locked up, the safer law abiding citizens are from them. THEY, at least, are deterred while they are in prison. Good. A large prison population is part of the price we pay for being a freer society and one that encourages personal liberty. Sadly, much of the population isn’t capable of responsible liberty–that’s one reason the Left thinks it wise to take more of it away. Americans’ suspicion and reflex defiance of authority is a feature, not a bug—but it’s a feature with some unpleasant and expensive consequences. They are still worth it.
“Tell me what is illegal in the US that shouldn’t be?”
We’ve argued fairly famously on narcotics, and seeing as about half of the 2.2 million people currently incarcerated are non-violent drug offenders, that seems like a solid place to go, but since you’re on the record as being in favor of those, I think my next most egregious example would be the practice of imprisoning indigent people. In those cases we’re usually not talking about violent criminals. Heck, we’re often not even talking about criminals, technically. Just people who can’t afford to pay their fines.
“The more violent criminals that are convicted and locked up, the safer law abiding citizens are from them. THEY, at least, are deterred while they are in prison.”
I’m not saying that we should release everyone and hold a healing circle. Remember the context of the case we’re talking about. There is obviously room between where we’re at and not having murder laws. We’re obviously talking about more than the most violent of offenders.
I’ve identified what I don’t like about your position Jack: It’s a motte and bailey.
I’m pointing out that American incarceration rates and practices are unusual and bad, and you keep on going to things that people generally agree on. The bailey are things like for-profit prisons, indigent incarceration, room and board charges, the length of sentences, and conditions. The motte is “we need murder laws”.
Valid point.
It’s not necessarily a fixable problem. If you can’t pay the fine, and we don’t want to lock you up, what’s the alternative? “Restorative justice?” The choice to do the crime needs some consequences, unpleasant ones. I’d like to start with teaching people that its wrong to break the law, that society suffers when you do, and doing it is going to hurt. Then what?
I cannot let this one pass.
HT wrote, “‘Needs that debt be paid’. What does that even mean in this context? How does one do that? What’s the debt, what’s the currency, at what rate is it paid? When is it over?”
Seriously?!
This part of HT’s comment questioning the use of “debt” in this context is completely devoid of critical thinking to the point that I’m seriously wondering if it’s pure ignorance or is something else entirely? To chastise others for using the word “debt” in this context is ludicrous.
What the “debt” is can be quantifiably defined for each criminal that goes through our criminal justice system. Agree with it or not; what our courts hand down as a sentence (aka punishment) is the “debt” the criminal must pay to society. For the debt to be paid means the prisoner must complete the conditions of the sentence and it’s not over until the criminal pays their debt to society.
I can’t believe I just had to point that out.
Yup, I’ve lost patience for stupidity and empty performative gestures and language.
You. Just. Said. Nothing.
It’s circular logic. “The debt is the thing that someone has to pay, and what they have to pay is the debt.”
Steve, You’re an idiot. I know that it must be exceptionally frustrating and frightening to navigate the world understanding as little of it as you do, but that’s not a good reason to frustrate other people with the burden of having to deal with you.
Back to my original point, and even using your incredibly stunted logic and definition – In this case, Houten was handed a life sentence with the opportunity for parole. That is part of the sentence. The words do not stop at “life imprisonment” just because that’s where you stopped reading.
So what does that mean? It means that the sentence, which you just said is the be all end all, explicitly and inherently considers the possibility of parole to be part of itself. Reasonable people would ask questions like “what does that mean?” or “when would that apply?”
You didn’t.
Because you aren’t a reasonable person.
Bite me HT.
Do you ever get tired of saying stupid things, having me explain why you’re stupid, and then retreating to asking me for mastication, or is this a kink of yours? Some kind of masochistic mouth fetish?
HT,
You just crossed that civility gray line.
It’s real clear that you don’t bother to even try to comprehend what I write, like the totality of my comments in this comment thread, and your bias against me is all consuming causing you to do nothing but be uncivil towards me. It’s pure Witherspoon Derangement Syndrome (WDS) trolling.
TROLLING: verb Posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, to draw attention to themself and for their own amusement.
Steve,
I’m not the one who changed my name from “Zoltar Speaks” to distance myself from my online history.
I’m not the one who sought legal advice to try to sue a local school board member so she would have to unblock me on Facebook so that I could continue to harass her online.
I would look very deeply into a mirror before accusing anyone else of “trolling”.
I’m currently reading through Ryan’s comment and responding. My tone, if you’ll notice, will be very different towards him than it is to you. That’s because I respect him. I respect him because he isn’t an arrested-development manchild who thinks posting urban dictionary entries (some of which I know you’ve authored) into a conversation is the height of discourse.
If at any time you don’t like what I’m saying, you could choose to not engage. You have that agency. I have not started a conversation with you in years. It’s not hard.
[Please go to your respective corners, gentlemen…]
This is specifically for readers that may not know anything about these two statements made above, here’s the facts with full transparency…
Humble Talent wrote, “I’m not the one who changed my name from “Zoltar Speaks” to distance myself from my online history.”
HT’s assumption is false; that’s not the reason I’m using my name. I chose to create a new blog and use my name instead of a psydonyme, and although I don’t actively advertise it, I don’t remember ever denying the fact that I posted using the Zoltar Speaks psydonyme. The Zoltar Speaks psydonyme is actually still active along with the associated blog and could be used to post comments anytime, I choose not to use it, but it’s maintained so the blog remains in tact. So the fact is that I didn’t “change” my name at all, I just made what I consider to be a more ethical blogging and commenting choice, others are free to choose their own paths.
Humble Talent also wrote, “I’m not the one who sought legal advice to try to sue a local school board member so she would have to unblock me on Facebook so that I could continue to harass her online.”
I didn’t “harass” that local school board member, I engaged in conversation on a publicly accessible Facebook profile page where the school board member posted a comment about issues related to the school district which she was elected to; additionally, I’m not the one that drove the conversation into the gutter with false accusations, outright lies and in-your-face innuendo, the ones that did that were that local school board member and a few of her supporters. Here are all the related facts in detail, full transparency, read it all for yourself, and make up your own mind. There was a follow up blog post a couple of months later titled “The Indoctrinated Social Justice Hive Mind” that addressed some more things in that Facebook comment thread. There was also a discussion in the Ethics Alarms August 28, 2019 Open Forum titled “Open Forum! (Now Email And Tweet This Link To All Your Friends…)”.
I’ve provided the facts, full transparency, regarding these two statements and I’ve also provided readers with information to other places that they can comment about this; so, since neither one of these statements have anything at all to do with the topic of this blog post or comments in this thread, let’s not discuss this any further in this thread.
Last thought on this.
I’m glad that Steve isn’t backing away from his previous “pseudonym”. I feel I might be forgiven for assuming that he was, seeing as all the previous times he was asked about it he didn’t answer the question and told people to drop it (an example is here: https://ethicsalarms.com/2019/08/31/comment-of-the-day-from-the-epic-commenter-donnybrook-in-this-weeks-open-forum/).
But now that the air is clear, and if it’s true that he isn’t backing away from it, and only stopped using it as a style change, I’m sure he won’t mind the use of it! Thing is, I don’t actually believe that to be true, so in an attempt to discourage future interaction with me, I’d like to announce that all in all my responses to Steve I will be referring to him as the one and only: Zoltar Speaks.
This WDS obsession of yours is going to eat you up; but hey, do whatever your heart desires if it helps you sleep at night.
Zoltar… Do you want me to start citing the comments you’ve made where you’ve referred to “Zoltar” in the third person?
Well since it seems that your only purpose regarding me is to try to intentionally defame me in these threads with trolling attacks, deflections and ad hominems then that choice would be right inline with the other nonsense personal attacks that you’ve launched over the last few months. It’s become a signature significant pattern of yours.
For the sake of maintaining general civility within these blog threads, maybe you should simply ignore anything I write whether it’s a reply to you or not.
Oh no, Zoltar. That’s OK. I’ll continue to respond. I’ll even continue to bring reciepts!
Like this time, when someone talking about the Blog called Zoltar an idiot, and Steve Witherspoon came to his defense:
https://windypundit.com/2020/03/jack-marshall-day-2020/#comments
It’s so coincidental that you seemed to agree with the stunning intellect of that totally-not-you person.
Gee, Humble, thanks for linking to one of Windy’s hate Jack posts….
And a plus is that it’s so “on topic”.
Sorry… It was the first link that came up, I had better to pick from and should have been more choosy. Mea culpa.
Nah, I was just kidding. Windy’s links are fair game.
Or Here’s a better one!
From your own blog (at least until you edit it out):
“I came across a really good blog presentation written by Zoltar Speaks about the recurring climate trends and how those that are predicting climate change catastrophes are basically using “tunnel vision” and “bad science” to ignore historical climate trends. The blog post is a couple of years old and called Climate Change and be forewarned it’s long, opinionated, and informative. Here is a sample of the blog post, it’s what I’d call the conclusion.”
It’s so good that the two of you have such a great relationship.
This reminds me that Tim Leveir has periodically chided me for referring to “Ethics Alarms” in the third person. I’ll still defend that practice when it seems appropriate, but every time I’m temped to do it, that alarm pings.
HT wrote, “From your own blog (at least until you edit it out)”
No WDS asshole, I’ve got more integrity than that.
Enough integrity not to make a stealth edit, but not enough to disclose that you’re talking about yourself?
“be forewarned it’s long, opinionated, and informative.”
My eyes rolled so far, so hard, back into my head that I was worried that I might become temporarily blind.
I do think it’s interesting that you’re spending so much time showing how your original assumption claim that I “changed my name from ‘Zoltar Speaks’ to distance myself from my online history” was utterly false as I stated. Honestly HT why would anyone that’s actually trying to distance themself from their previous online history directly link to and openly discuss that pervious online content? I suppose that’s what you get for making up things for smearing and trolling someone that you appear to be biasedly obsessed with. You know what’s said about bias.
As Jack so eloquently wrote in his comment at 5:17pm, I too have alarms that ping and I do make an effort to personally address those alarms. Do you have those alarms pinging right now or are you completely oblivious to your own behavior?
Personally I think this apparent obsession of yours has gone on long enough. Let it go, and free up that gray matter space that I’m occupying in your head, you’ll likely sleep a lot better without my Zoltar Speaks voice endlessly echoing throughout your thoughts.
Have a nice evening HT.
Zoltar, I respond to things. The moment you cease to respond to me, I’ll have nothing to reply to.
Like I’ve said since then, I’m glad to be wrong and know that you didn’t change your handle to distance yourself from your past.
I’m still not sure I believe it. I think referring to oneself in the third person multiple times over the summer of ’19 Is weird. We’re not talking about some Freudian slip here… Steve Witherspoon came to the defense of Zoltar Speaks’ honor. You were, at best, sock puppeting. You told people not to mention it or bring it up. And oh my… Once it’s pointed out publicly, methinks the lady doth protest too much.
But I suppose I could be wrong. And if I am, why should you care? I’m going to continue to call you Zoltar, and you’re going to continue to not care.
Right?
Again HT aka Jeff,
Do what ever helps you sleep at night.
The difference, Zoltar, Is I changed from “Jeff” to “Humble Talent” because at the time there were four people named Jeff in this comment section, and people were getting us confused. So I announced my name change, and then I never went around the internet saying what a hell of a smart guy that Jeff character was.
HT/Jeff wrote “The difference, Zoltar, Is I changed from “Jeff” to “Humble Talent” because at the time there were four people named Jeff in this comment section, and people were getting us confused. “
Yup, I already knew that.
Do you honestly not see how horribly that reflects on you? That not only do you retreat to rank whataboutism, but you knew that the situations you were comparing were materially different?
Where was your announcement, Zoltar?
HT/Jeff wrote, “Do you honestly not see how horribly that reflects on you?”
Now you, the one with a verifiable signature significant pattern of being a obsessed WDS commenter that does nothing in regards to me but intentionally try to defame me in these threads with trolling attacks, deflections and ad hominems are judging me? That’s rich.
Give it a rest before you completely loose it.
I’m more than willing to let a third party read this and come to their own conclusion. I mean, once the comment is posted, it’s not like we have much of a choice. I thought at some point shame might keep you from replying, but you are what you are.
To what you said… Zoltar… It’s only defamation if it’s not true.
Opinions are, as a matter of fact and law, per se, not defamation. At the risk of you spiraling into a Tuvellian pattern, can you actually identify a single statement of fact I made which was not entirely true?
You can disagree with my characterizations, like how I consider what you did harassment (although I stand by that entirely) or that I think you were trying to distance yourself from your person because it had a bad reputation (it’s what I believe, regardless), but what you can’t do is get away from the facts.
-You did change your name.
-You didn’t announce it.
-You did tell people not to mention it.
-You did interact with yourself in the third person multiple times.
-You did get in an online spat with a PTA member.
-You did continue the spat in her DMs.
-She did block you.
-You did approach the ACLU for legal advice, because
-You did want to continue to message her.
This isn’t derangement, Zoltar. I’ve told you before that I don’t like you, and that I’d prefer you not communicate with me.
Nothing you’ve ever typed has hit me as a well thought out position. I think that you’re a troll lacking any sense of self awareness. I find you dishonest, lazy, stupid, and possibly worst of all, Boring.
There is no stereotypical right wing position that you will not take. I could with near 100% accuracy predict your response to anything by picturing what the left wing caricature of a right wing nutjob would think.
And if at any time you’d like this conversation to end… You could just… Stop.
I had to go spend some time finishing a promised blog post and then I come back to read more of HT’s deflections, accusations and personal attacks. Such is life some days.
HT wrote, “It’s only defamation if it’s not true. Opinions are, as a matter of fact and law, per se, not defamation.”
Your WDS is front and center again.
I did not write defamation HT, I wrote “intentionally try to defame me in these threads with trolling attacks, deflections and ad hominems”
This is the literal sense that I used the word defame.
DEFAME: to damage the reputation of a person or group by saying or writing bad things about them that are not true”
I think you know good and well that if I had actually meant “defamation”, in the legal sense, I would have written “defamation”, but as usual you have ignored the possibility that what I wrote is literally correct and you chose to take the WDS rhetorical path and literally defame me in a Ethics Alarms comment thread again.
This doesn’t reflect well on your constant personal attacks calling me “dishonest, lazy, stupid” and “an idiot”.
In recent months, almost everything you write in reply to one of my comments is trolling attacks, one nonsensical false accusation after another, one sliver of false innuendo after another, off topic deflections and pure ad hominems and all this is seems to be specifically fabricated to attack my character. Again HT, you’re welcome to your own opinions about me but your behaviors are revealing.
HT wrote, “And if at any time you’d like this conversation to end… You could just… Stop.”
HT also wrote above, “If at any time you don’t like what I’m saying, you could choose to not engage. You have that agency.”
The exact same things can be said of you HT, but you yet seem to completely ignore those concepts when it comes to your own choices. Do you have some kind of undefined double standard when it comes to me?
As for me; you’ll be treated no differently than anyone else in these comment threads and that’s a notable difference from you, you’ve stated your bias plainly…
…it’s statements like that that shine a light on your WDS bias, it really is signature significant. If you write something that I choose to reply to, I’ll do so like I do with others; I’ll quote what I’m addressing and then make my point(s).
You’re welcome to continue taking the low road and drag comment threads into the gutter with your uncivil personal attacks, but for the sake of all those that participate at Ethics Alarms give your WDS a rest, or don’t, it really is your choice.
You can have the last word in this sub thread, choose wisely.
I wrote:
“It’s only defamation if it’s not true. Opinions are, as a matter of fact and law, per se, not defamation.”
To which you responded with:
“DEFAME: to damage the reputation of a person or group by saying or writing bad things about them that are not true”
Regardless of what definition you use, you’re going to have to clear the bar of truth. What I said, even though you don’t like it, even though you may disagree with my characterization of it, was substantially true. You’re going to continue to be hung up on the idea that a characterization or an opinion can be untrue… And it’s funny, because this is the exact mind spiral I was referring to when I said “Tuvellian”. It’s like there’s a special kind of retard on the internet that thinks that they can argue that because they don’t like someone’s interpretation of facts, they can objectively say that the interpretation is objectively false by ignoring the facts. Again… I am more than willing to let people read this conversation and judge for themselves.
“In recent months, almost everything you write in reply to one of my comments is trolling attacks, one nonsensical false accusation after another, one sliver of false innuendo after another, off topic deflections and pure ad hominems and all this is seems to be specifically fabricated to attack my character.”
To be clear… They aren’t “fabrications” or “false innuendo”. I believe everything I type.
And I don’t think it’s “derangement”, I think people who know eachother for as long as we have have the right to form opinions about people. I think you’re a bad person. I genuinely don’t respect your intelligence. And if it’s not blisteringly clear by now: The behavior pattern you’re describing is an intentional attempt to discourage you from interacting with me. You will never get anything else, ever again. Because I’m never going to enjoy a conversation with you, but I sure as heck enjoy making fun of you, and I need to get something out of the interaction as well.
Take this as an exacmple:
“As for me; you’ll be treated no differently than anyone else in these comment threads and that’s a notable difference from you, you’ve stated your bias plainly…”
This is a useless truism that doesn’t even have the benefit of being true, if you don’t see how your tone changes when dealing with people you disagree with, that’s fine. I’m not looking for your opinion, I’m telling you that it does.
And to an extent, it should. “Respect is earned”, as the old maxim goes. If someone demonstrates that they deserve your scorn, it’s a special kind of derangement (to use your word) to continue to treat them like actual whole, respectable people.
“You’re welcome to continue taking the low road and drag comment threads into the gutter with your uncivil personal attacks, but for the sake of all those that participate at Ethics Alarms give your WDS a rest, or don’t, it really is your choice.”
Alternately, it’s yours. Like I’ve said, multiple times, I would like nothing better than to never talk to you again. If at any time you’d like these conversations to end, “for the sake of (whatever cause you’d like to ad lib in here)”, you have the ability, the agency, to stop.
And because, you’ve so kindly offered me the last word, maybe that’ll actually happen.
Ryan Harkins wrote, “One thing I will agree with is that rehabilitation does not necessitate release from prison. Rehabilitation does not require a reduction in sentence. Some crimes do require a strict penalty that forfeit life outside of prison, because society needs that debt paid and it needs that deterrent to keep others from committing that crime.”
I’m, a real hard ass about criminals serving time sentenced and I think there is a difference in completely paying one’s debt to society and forgiveness, I consider them to be completely separate.
Just perusing some of the history — Van Houten along with Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Manson were all originally sentenced to death, but those sentences were automatically changed to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for trials before 1972.
Vincent Bugliosi — the original prosecutor — in his book “Helter Skelter” predicted that Manson would never be released and would die in prison, which he did. But apparently he thought the women would be released after perhaps 15-20 years. So far none of the four have been released and two have died in prison. Both surviving women have been recommended for parole (in the 2010s) but vetoed by the sitting governors.
So the original sentence did not allow for the possibility of parole, but I assume that legally that changed when their sentences were changed to life imprisonment.
With Van Houten, there is another twist — her original conviction was reversed on repeal and she was retried twice, the first resulting in a mistrial and the second in a conviction for first degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia she was out on bond for six months during the second re-trial.
=========================
I think the original death sentences were appropriate. However, given the current circumstances it is difficult to credit the idea that Van Houten and Krenwinkel would still be threats to society. After 50+ years in prison, it is an open question how well they could even adapt to life on the outside. I guess I would land on the side of granting parole.
I think that the heinous nature of the killings, the worldwide, lurid publicity that ensued, and their unquestioned actual guilt have combined to keep them in prison all this time. And since their parole boards have started to recommend release, the two governors apparently decided they didn’t want to be associated with their release — but that’s politicians for you.
No one releases attack ads accusing you of NOT releasing Willie Horton.
Stipulated: The purpose of punishment is twofold: To prevent the criminal from committing more crimes and to prevent other people from committing crimes, through deterrence. (I, like Jack, consider the feelings of the victims and those related to them to be irrelevant for the purposes of defining the offender’s punishment, at least in criminal cases. Civil cases are negotiations, functioning under different principles.)
I may have written this before, but I’ve never been a fan of the U.S. constitutional amendment against “cruel and unusual punishment”, because I figure “punishment” should be whatever it takes to teach an offender why ethics are important. For most people, that would entail kindness and support, but some people might be missing a basic understanding of suffering, the effects of one’s actions on others, or the social contract. Some people might have a compulsion that needs to be… broken. If it takes extreme measures for people to learn how to function in society, so be it. If they never learn, I see no reason to release them, because it turns out they never should have been out in society in the first place. If they’re incapable of learning (and have proven themselves a deadly threat), I suppose it’s not wasteful to apply the death penalty. (I understand that the Eighth Amendment is in place because humans cannot be trusted to skillfully and constructively implement a “firm hand” when punishing people, so that they learn and adopt ethical principles. If humans could be trusted to punish people ethically and effectively, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.)
For people who learn very quickly why what they did was unethical, there are two reasons for their punishment to exceed the time it takes for them to learn:
One reason is to make sure they aren’t gaming the system, putting on an act based on what they know ethical people would say and do to minimize their own inconvenience while sociopathically retaining their unethical ways. It’s very difficult to assess people’s character, and perhaps impossible to standardize. A minimum length of punishment will give them more opportunities for the mask to slip, but also more opportunities to actually learn.
The second reason is to continue to serve as a deterrent, since otherwise prospective offenders could tell themselves they could get out of punishment by repenting immediately (whether or not that would actually be effective). We do not want a revolving door for people who sincerely believe in ethics but who are too impulsive to live by them when tempted, and we do not want people thinking there might be one. A punishment that does not depend on the offender’s mental state demonstrates that the rules are taken seriously: there is no negotiation, no rationalization, no excuse nor mitigating circumstance.
Applying those principles to the case at hand:
Has the offender’s punishment given them the opportunity to learn? It sounds like it to me.
Can we tell the offender will not offend again? It sounds like it, in this case. The circumstances of the original murder(s) help us figure out why the person committed them and therefore what needs to have changed in them to be able to trust them in society. 54 years seems more than sufficient for cult de-programming.
That said, parole seems like a very useful concept, because the offender also has to reearn the trust of the public, who haven’t been interacting with the offender during the punishment. Parole legally reduces privacy for people who have betrayed the public trust, so that the public can feel safe allowing them to reintegrate into society and build up that trust again gradually. I’m not sure I’d be confident living next to a human who had killed people previously unless I knew someone was keeping an eye on them. I’d have to get to know them before trusting my safety around them.
Is the punishment a deterrent? For those murderers who are inclined to consider that they might get caught, I’d say it’s as good as we could hope for. I don’t know how many murderers fear death more than prison or vice versa. Different murderers have different defining motivations. Some probably consider lack of freedom to be worse than death. Some just don’t have a great grasp of reality in the first place, such as people in cults. Ethical influence is often more effective at preventing crime than deterrence, and sometimes it’s the only thing that will work. (Well, that and good security measures.)
So yes, I’m in favor of parole. I want to move human society away from the instinctive paradigm of “my suffering at your hands has not ended, so neither shall your suffering” and towards a more constructive paradigm of “society failed to teach you ethics, but you will learn“. People should regard parole/release as a triumph of ethics, an earned opportunity for society and the offender themselves to salvage a wayward consciousness.
P.S. A discussion of ethical punishment must assume that society’s laws are in accordance with ethical principles and that society’s institutions are set up to support people in abiding by those laws and principles.
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “P.S. A discussion of ethical punishment must assume that society’s laws are in accordance with ethical principles and that society’s institutions are set up to support people in abiding by those laws and principles.”
I’m honestly confused by the second part of that comment where you write “…society’s institutions are set up to support people in abiding by those laws and principles.”
Aren’t laws that are in accordance with ethical principles expected to be followed by the people within the jurisdiction of the laws? Why would they need some kind of “institution” to support them in abiding those laws and principles? What am I missing?
What I mean by “institutions to support people in abiding by ethical laws and principles” is that we need to make sure that people have the resources to live in accordance with the law. For instance, if you make vagrancy illegal, it’s important to make sure people have legal ways to obtain basic housing, et cetera.
For example, you mentioned a man who was unable to get jobs to support his family and so planned on returning to jail so his family would be cared for. A society that expects people to follow the law should not have “cracks that some people can fall into” where the only paths to a life under humane conditions are illegal. Sometimes the more effective way to ensure laws are followed is to help people get what they need legally rather than watching them starve until they do something illegal and then punishing them for it.
Does that make more sense?
Thanks for the clarification.
Not only this, but I think laws have to be relatively intuitive, clearly stated, and have a basis in sense.
What they teach in first year law school courses (some of which I did attend) is that ideally, a law needs to have a need, the law needs to address that need, and the law needs to be enforceable. America strayed far from the ideal a long time ago.
My go-to example is the number of dildos one is legally able to own in the state of Texas (6). I mean, to an extent, I get it…. Why does one need more than six dildos…. And what could one possibly be doing with them? But that’s not really the point, is it? If someone wanted to have an extreme dildo collection, a knob for every day or the year, a full spectrum of color, or one for each of all 52 presidents with their likenesses engraved on the shaft what business does the state have in regulating your cock arsenal?
Mike Chase wrote a book; “How to Become A Federal Criminal, an illustrated handbook for the aspiring offender” where he laid out some of the more colorful and harmless ways to become a federal criminal.
Some examples:
CFR SS82.2 (D) Coin smuggling – Have $25.05 in nickels or $25.01 worth of pennies on your body or in your suitcase while leaving the country. This was actually an issue for people going to gamble in places that had nickel slot machines. 13 rolls of nickels seems like a lot, but you underestimate people’s will to gamble, and there were a fair number of convictions on this.
18 USC SS336 makes it a crime to write a cheque for less than a dollar. But more than that, it makes it illegal to write any note, check, memorandum, token, or other obligation for less than $1. You might say, “does that include coupons?” and the answer is “depends how you write them”. In 1874 prosecutors indicted an employee of a furnace store in Michigan for circulating notes issued by the employer that said “The Bangor Furnace Company will pay the bearer, on demand, fifty cents, in goods, at their store in Bangor, Mich.”.
26 USC SS5674 and 5053(e) make it a crime for a single person to brew more than 100 gallons of tax-free beer for personal consumption in any given year. The limit is 200 gallons for a household with two adults. The good news is the law doesn’t require the cohabitating adults marry before qualifying for the 200 gallon limit. The bad news is that you don’t get an increase in the beer limit when you have kids, no matter how badly you might need it. That said Revised statute SS3266 still makes it a crime for anyone to brew booze on a boat, so Joe Manchin is SOL with his houseboat.
And of all the white, powdery substances that you might expect to get you locked up, I doubt sugar was on the list, but 26 USC SS5686 makes it punishable by up to a year in prison if the government suspects that you possess sugar with the intent to make moonshine.
27 CFR SS4.39(a)(2) makes it a crime for a wine maker to disparage another wine on the label of the bottle, and perhaps that makes sense, but 27 CFR SS 4.39(a)(7)(iii) prohibits labelling win in a way that “tends to create the impression that a wine […] has intoxicating qualities.”
On the topic of booze, being drunk isn’t usually a federal crime. With the exception of pilots, bus drivers, train conductors, and ship captains, most people have to stumble onto federal property before they can be federally charged for their drunkenness. 50 CFR SS27.81 prohibits entering a wildlife sanctuary while intoxicated to a degree that may “unreasonably annoy persons in the vicinity” so, uh… Watch out when camping.
On the topic of Federal Land, 18 USC SS1865 makes the following federal crimes:
-Scattering human ashes without a permit
-snowshoeing in a parking lot
-using a hovercraft
-delivering someone by parachute
-gambling
-hitchhiking
-using drugs, poison, explosives or electricity to catch fish
-towing a water skier from a hang glider without a permit and
-teasing animals
While some of those make more sense than others, that last one is a very easy way to get the job of entering into criminal enterprise done, I recommend flipping off a squirrel. Perhaps a chin flick, or a bas d’Honneur. A full moon might be going too far.
Can’t find a squirrel? No problem! 36 CFR SS2.34(a)(2) prohibits making an obscene gesture on public land without any requirement that an animal be present! In fact, 2.34 prohibits a whole range of disorderly conduct in national parks and forests. Parkgoers have been charged under that section for things like saying “fuck you” to a park ranger, masturbating in a restroom while a park police officer watched “for about a minute”, and even leaving a love note for a member of a girls’ high school cross country team.
36 CFR SS2.1(a)(3) prohibits “tossing, throwing or rolling rocks or other items inside caves or caverns, down hillsides or mountainsides, or into thermal features” Although it might seem broad, section 2.1(a)(3) is not a blanket ban on all object tossing, so parkgoers looking to be a federal criminal should consult topographical maps.
36 CFR SS2.15(a)(5) requires all national park visitors to comply with “pet excrement disposal conditions”. In most parks, that means that failing to throw away your dog’s poop is a federal crime. However, Section 2.15(f) contains one notable exception: the otherwise strict dog poop removal requirement “does not apply to dogs used by authorized Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers in performance of their official duties”. Leading one to wonder where the line between criminal poop and official doodie is.
I’m sorry about that last one. It’s also illegal to clog a toilet in a national forest, or to import a pregnant polar bear. It’s a felony to deface money, and it’s a crime to smash a mailbox. The land of the free is incredibly inundated with strange, vague and obscure laws to the point where civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates in his book “Three Felonies a Day” that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day. Which is part of the reason why truisms like “you shouldn’t break laws” annoys me so much. The person saying it is almost certainly a hypocrite, and the defense of “I didn’t know that was a crime” is almost comical in context.
It looks like later case law clarified that this doesn’t affect person to person transfers – I wonder if it was supposed to protect the use of actual hard currency somehow to prevent people from arbitrarily creating their own “paper money” for values typically transferred in metal currency.
I wonder if something was going on in the 1800s that amounted to some type of fraud that this law specifically aimed at?
Is that a you-should-know-your-1800’s-America-and-I’m-being-sarcastic comment, or an actual question?
Just gonna say, if there’s something obvious that you feel I should know… I don’t.
Legit question. I mean…I would submit that our laws weren’t and aren’t enacted without a legislatively determined need. That is – people were elected to office to solve problems – and I doubt the legislature one day said “hey, let’s write a law about checks less than a dollar….no no…I just imagined that up to frustrate people 200 years from now…lol!”
I do think there should be periodic reviews of the existing laws to determine their relevance to modern conditions. A dollar in the 1800s is vastly different than a dollar today – so much so that I’d be willing to guess that the number of people out of our nation of 350,000,000 writing checks for less than a dollar can be counted on two hands. But in the 1800s, apparently there was enough of a problem somehow related to this, that a law was needed. My guess has to be that some sort of fraud was involve related to the arbitrary creation of “private paper money” in lieu of using official minted hard currency. But again – I don’t know.
-Scattering human ashes without a permit
Kind of weird because of the scale of the affect – ashes being an incredibly tiny impact on the massive national parks we have… but in fairness…I’m sure this was an overall “ick” factor and if someone wanted to push the issue – there are some small plots of land in various locations considered national parks and I can only guess the kinds of community complaints that arise if someone starts dumping what amounts to human remains (however perfectly reduced and sterilized by fire they are).
-snowshoeing in a parking lot
I would assume this should be under a general statute of “don’t destroy government property” but was called out specifically because enough shmoes somewhere were putting on their spiky snowshoes before leaving the asphalt parking lot to wreaked enough havoc to the surface to make it a costly problem. I earnestly doubt any other country is fine with this kind of conduct.
-using a hovercraft
I would assume this also has some level of destructiveness involved as sizeable hovercraft push alot of air to stay aloft.
-delivering someone by parachute
The federal government is a bit touchy about controlled entry into large public lands. I’d assume ground entry through non-gated means also is considered illegal. I think, in light of general American “try it and find out” attitudes our regulations have long lists of things people “tried and found out”. American law versus actual Americans is one big ethics incompleteness arms race of a “limit pushing culture” (something I’ve been meaning to write about on an Open Forum).
-hitchhiking
Like, this one is annoying. The real problem here isn’t hitchhiking – it’s what bad people *could do* to hitchhikers or to people picking up bad people. But there’s already laws against doing those bad things.
-using drugs, poison, explosives or electricity to catch fish
I feel like other countries probably frown on this also.
-towing a water skier from a hang glider without a permit
So this one reminds me of the army safety briefings we always had to give soldiers Friday afternoons. Every Friday the list of “don’t do’s” got longer based on the conduct of the soldiers the previous weekend.
-teasing animals
What can I say? We have to be told not to do this.
Like I said, some make more sense than others, I was really just trying to get to 36 CFR SS2.34(a)(2).
“Teasing animals is a crime” -> “I can’t find a squirrel” -> “That’s OK. Being obscene is a crime too, flip off a tree where a ranger can see you.”
Should Leslie Van Houten be paroled? Let’s examine a few questions first.
Q: Are the victims of her crimes able to be paroled from their death sentence?
A: No
Q: How will paroling her benefit society?
A: I can’t imagine her release or incarceration would have a significant impact on society one way or another.
Q: What option is more cost-effective incarceration or parole?
A: Whether she is in or out of prison the taxpayers will cover her living expenses until her death. It is an arithmetic calculation as to which is more cost-effective. Regardless the difference is insignificant based on all the other things governments waste taxpayer funds on.
Q: Will her continued incarceration act as a deterrent to other cult-following potential murderers?
A: That question almost disputes the axiom there are no stupid questions.
Q: Will her continued incarceration act as a deterrent to other potential murders committed by robbers, drug dealers, gang bangers, etc.?
A: No, I imagine most potential criminals have never heard of her and don’t believe that they are going to be caught anyway. Only if they thought there was a very high probability of arrest and conviction would they concern themselves with the severity of the punishment.
Q: Has she paid her debt to society?
A: I don’t know how to calculate or measure what that debt is.
Q: Should Leslie Van Houten be paroled?
A: No, but only because I am a vindictive SOB who thinks if her victims can’t enjoy life and freedom why should she?
If you were really a vindictive SOB, you’d get her released so she can endure twilight years of not being able to afford even 3rd rate medical care outside.
I know too many examples of early release on medical grounds that were effectively painful death sentences.
YMMV, the 8th amendment in CA is interpreted liberally, so to speak, not so much in other circuits.
Which brings us back to Shawshank Redemption and the story of Brooks. In the end, his parole was his death sentence.
Speaking of what happens after prison inmates are released.
I’ve know a few x-cons over my lifetime. I even had a couple of different roommates sharing a couple of different apartments with me when I was in my late teens. I found over the time I was around those two completely separate individuals that they hadn’t learned a damn thing from their incarceration, they would still engage in illegal activities. I completely cut ties with both of these people.
Later in my late 20’s, I worked for a facility that had a homeless shelter for women and their families and there was a family in there and the father was an x-con. I got to know him a little bit over the 60 days or so that they were allowed to stay there. He seemed to be a decent person, he seemed to really love his family, he was non-violent, caring and respectful of those around him, and he knew what he had done in the past was wrong, he had been in and out of prison a couple of times. In one of the last conversations I had with him before they moved out of the shelter he told me a couple of things that surprised me; he was openly stating that he would probably be back in prison in the next year and when I said that sounded like he was already planning on it he opened up with something that surprised me. He told me that when he was in prison the state basically took care of his wife and kid, they had a relatively free roof over their head, welfare, food stamps, free health care, free transportation where ever they needed to go in the city, etc, etc but when he got out of prison and got some kind of job all those benefits would go away rather quickly because his wages would be just enough to strip all those benefits away from the family but yet there wasn’t sufficient dollars to provide for the family, they would end up in a homeless shelter. He told me that he’d likely commit some non-violent crime like breaking and entering a business at night so he would end up back in prison again and his family would be taken care of. It was the only way he knew of to take care of his family. He had tunnel vision and couldn’t see any hope for his family beyond that.
I actually tried to find him a job with decent wages, but at that time those kinds of unskilled labor jobs were rather scarce in the area and the ones that were available required the employee to be bondable and he wasn’t due to his criminal theft history. It seemed like the only jobs he could get were at or close to minimum wage, usually just short of enough hours to get any benefits, and crappy hours. He would have to work at least three of them to make ends meet making him gone from home all the time and getting little to no sleep. I don’t know how society can help someone like that who has paid their debt to society and has no hope for the future. I don’t know what happened to him or his family after they moved out.
This is one of those cracks in society that some people can fall into and for sometimes it seems to be “permanent”.
You meet all kinds of people when working at a homeless shelter, when you work at a homeless shelter that is devoted to helping women and their families you can meet them from all walks of life due to domestic violence.
Oops. That was supposed to be a stand alone comment, not a reply to zoebrain’s comment.
Heinlein!
The problem with teenagers is that they are easily coerced and cajoled by charismatic types if those teenagers didn’t have solid adult influences raising them.
Ordinarily, lower class types just end up petty criminals and are easily raked up by the authorities.
It’s the middle and upper class delinquents who didn’t have good parenting that are the most dangerous.
They came from backgrounds that we assume involved responsible adults.
Those kids become your Charles Manson willing killers.