Title: Charles Manson Was Sentenced to Death. Why Wasn’t He Executed? - HISTORY
Headings: Charles Manson Was Sentenced to Death. Why Wasn’t He Executed?
Charles Manson Was Sentenced to Death. Why Wasn’t He Executed?
The cult leader and mass murderer got parole hearings until the very end.
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Content: Why Wasn’t He Executed? The cult leader and mass murderer got parole hearings until the very end. Author: Becky Little
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The cult leader and mass murderer got parole hearings until the very end. In 1971, cult leader Charles Manson was sentenced to death for murdering two people and orchestrating the killings of seven others in August of 1969. But why, if he received the death penalty all those years ago, did he spend his life in jail, dying of natural causes in 2017? It all has to do with a couple of court cases that suspended the death penalty the year after Manson was sentenced. These cases effectively struck down all methods of state execution in the U.S. for four years, leaving Manson and his followers with the next harshest sentence at the time in California—life with parole. “At the time that Manson and his followers were sentenced to death, California did not have a life without parole sentence,” says Hadar Aviram, a law professor in California who is writing a book about the Manson Family parole hearings, titled Yesterday’s Monsters. So when the death penalty was taken away, Manson and his followers were bumped down to a sentence in which they would not only live, they would have a chance to walk free.