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Whenever notorious killer Charles Manson or one of his convicted loyalists has shown up for parole in the past 40 years, a Los Angeles County prosecutor has joined family members of the victims in a prison in State of California to argue against the release.
But when Kay Martley joined a California Board of Parole Hearings videoconference to review the parole of convicted ‘family’ murderer Manson Bruce Davis earlier this month, she was stunned to learn that she would plead the case on behalf of her murdered relative alone.
“I had no one to speak on my behalf,” said Martley, 81, whose cousin Gary Hinman was tortured and killed by Manson supporters on July 27, 1969. “I felt like no one was there. cared more for the victim’s families. We are totally forgotten. “
The absence of a prosecutor was not an oversight. It was the result of a policy change ordered by new Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who campaigned on promises to reduce the number of people in prison.
The new warrant puts an end to Los Angeles County prosecutors who oppose the parole of lifers who have already served their mandatory minimum period of incarceration.
Gascón’s directive is part of a sudden shift in the way his district attorney’s office, the country’s largest, views victims’ rights before, during and after criminal trials.
The move is unlikely to have a direct effect on Davis’ fate, experts say. Even though the State Council has recommended parole – the sixth time it has done so – California Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to deny the convicted killer’s early release.
But the dynamic of a victim’s family member feeling abandoned by prosecutors is an unintended – but thorny – consequence of the new push by some progressive-minded district attorneys to stop trying to influence. parole decisions.
Gascón is one of a handful of district attorneys in places like New Orleans and Brooklyn, New York, to rethink their stance on automatic opposition to parole applications. The movement gathered momentum following national recognition of racial inequity in the criminal justice system brought on by the death of George Floyd in custody in Minneapolis last May.
The Davis case illustrates what family members of victims can feel as if they are being left behind.
“My jaw is dropping. I am outraged,” said Debra Tate, whose actress sister Sharon Tate was murdered by supporters of Manson.
Tate joined the parole board hearing for Davis earlier this month and said she too was shocked by the absence of a prosecutor.
“At the most horrific moment, when you have to relive the horrific details of the loss of your loved ones, you are now also supposed to do the job and act like the DA would,” she said.
Under the new policy, Los Angeles County prosecutors will no longer attend parole hearings and will support in writing the granting of parole to someone who has already served their mandatory minimum sentence, Gascón said in a note to its employees on December 7. the day he was sworn in.
Gascón said that if state prison authorities determine that a person poses a “high” risk of reoffending, a prosecutor “may, in their letter, take a neutral position on granting parole.”
The underlying argument rests on the idea that state parole officers, not prosecutors, are best equipped to judge whether or not inmates are released.
“The role of prosecutors ends with conviction,” said Alex Bastian, special advisor to Gascón. “There has been a standoff between public safety and fairness. The district attorney thinks you can do both.”
Asked to answer specific questions about the Davis case, Bastian said the office is focused on providing “trauma-informed services” when a “heartbreaking crime occurs.”
“In any case where a person has spent nearly half a century in prison, the parole board has likely looked at generations of behavioral health assessments and determined that a man in his early 80s is not the same person he was when he was 30, ”he added. “People’s interest in continued incarceration, at extraordinary cost to taxpayers, likely influenced their decision to release.
Bastian noted that the office will continue to provide a victim advocate to support family members. He admitted that no victim advocates attended the virtual hearing, but said it was because family members objected to it. Martley took issue with this characterization, saying she was never made aware of the possibility of someone participating in the hearing.
Manson and his supporters committed a series of gruesome murders in Los Angeles in 1969.
Davis, now 78, was sentenced to life in prison in 1972 for the murders of Hinman and Donald “Shorty” Shea.
Hinman, an aspiring musician, was tortured and killed after Manson mistakenly believed he was inherited. According to court testimony, Davis held Hinman at gunpoint while Manson sliced off his face and sliced off his ear with a sword.
Authorities called home on July 31, 1969, discovered Hinman’s body and a Black Panther symbol and a “political pig” written on the walls of the house in what was later identified as Hinman’s blood.
Shea, who worked on the ranch where Manson and some of his followers lived, was stabbed and beaten to death. He was then dismembered and his remains were not discovered until 1977.
Davis was not involved in the most notorious murders of Tate and six others by Manson and his supporters.
Steve Grogan, who was convicted of Shea’s murder, was the only Manson supporter convicted in the murders to be released from prison, in 1985. Manson, who died in 2017, has been repeatedly denied parole.
Davis, who has had a total of 33 state parole hearings, has been deemed fit for parole six times as of 2010. In each case, the incumbent governor has blocked his release from prison.
The parole board’s latest recommendation regarding his release, referred to in official documents as “parole fitness”, will be finalized in the coming months. Corrections officials will do a legal review, then Newsom will have a month to overrule the decision, do nothing, or make changes to the decision by adding a parole condition or changing the release date.
Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Davis’ attorney, Michael Beckman, said his client was the “most rehabilitated” of all of the roughly 2,000 life-sentence inmates he represented.
“He’s had seven years of life, and if he was someone else rather than a member of the Manson family, he would have come out 30 years ago,” Beckman said. “There is no doubt that there is a visceral reaction [to the Manson murders]. But the law says you can’t hold someone responsible for their participation in the crime. He cannot be held responsible for what Charles Manson did. Bruce didn’t kill anyone. He participated in two homicides. And he took responsibility for it all. “
Retired Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Stephen Kay said he believed Gascón, in trying to do the right thing, had gone too far in issuing a general policy.
He said prosecutors play an important role in the process by ensuring that parole boards are informed of the facts of the underlying conviction, as well as the impact of the crimes on the families of the victims.
“Basically he took the people’s lawyer out of the equation and left it in the hands of the defense,” Kay said.
Kay said that at the first parole hearing of Patricia Krenwinkel, a participant from the Manson family, council received a two-page probation report which he said downplayed her role in the brutal murder of Tate, de her unborn baby and four other victims: Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, Steven Parent and Abigail Folger.
Four of the victims had been stabbed a total of 102 times and the fifth had been shot. Kay recited the gruesome details of the murders.
“I think we owe it to society not to let down a member of the Manson family, like Patricia Krenwinkel, who was involved in seven of the most brutal and violent murders in American crime history,” said Kay told the board. to a transcript. “I think it would be a great deterrent to show the public that everyone who commits murder cannot automatically be released on parole.”
It was the first draft of an argument he would make about 60 times, from 1978 to 2005, when he retired and a new generation of prosecutors began to appear at parole hearings.
Martley, the cousin of victim Gary Hinman, has been attending parole board hearings since 2012. She said she was in a “state of shock” when she realized that no member of the DA’s office district was not going to participate in the hearing on January 22. .
“I don’t think it is fair that the prisoner is represented by a lawyer at the hearing and I did not do it,” she said.
“It was a horrible crime,” she added. “God willing, I will be in good health so that I can continue fighting these people.”
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