Dying murderer and Manson follower denied prison release

Parent Cafe
101

<p>I just happened to think - would letting her out increase her suffering in that, by experiencing a few short weeks on the outside. she would come to better understand that of which she’s been deprived all these years?</p>

<p>My initial response was for her to remaiin in prison - never ride in a car, sit on the beach or feel the sun & rain on her face (etc.), but to experience those things now might intensify/reinforce the punishment she previously endured.</p>

<p>It’s no punishment if you don’t know what you don’t have.</p>

102

<br>

<br>

<p>The laws of justice would say no release, regardless of change of heart and inability to hurt anyone. The concept of mercy would say release. The interplay between the two is what makes the question of Ms. Atkin’s request for compassionate relief interesting.</p>

103

<p>Well said, ellemenope. I was going to add a thought, but yours really says it better.</p>

104

<br>

<br>

<p>This is a Catch 22 situation. You can’t get compassionate release without petitioning for it. But if you ask for it, you don’t deserve it.</p>

105

<p>Atkins was fortunate in the first place in that the death penalty wasn’t an option and life in prison without the possibility of parole didn’t yet exist, which I have to imagine she would have gotten. As for mercy, the prisons have chaplains, there are many prison ministries, etc. But what about compassion and mercy for the families of the victims? It would absolutely kill me, if I was the parent of one of those victims, and this woman got to have a good dying experience with her family after what she did. I mean it really would probably send me into a terrible depression and so I have to imagine it would push some of those family members over the edge. They deserve to not even have to see this request playing out in the papers day after day. All of this media frenzy has led me to read up on the crime and it really is about as bad as anything can be. I think it would be a posthumous crime against the victims to free her for any time at all.</p>

106

<p>“my feeling is that if Ms. Atkins could be so insensitive as to ask for compassionate relief, then she’s still not putting her victims ahead of herself.”</p>

<p>I have been thinking something similar. It seems that if a murderer asks for or is willing to accept compassionate release when they are dying, they haven’t acknowledged the depth of the crime that they committed.</p>

<p>The person whose life they took didn’t get to die surrounded by family and friends. The victim didn’t get the comfort of pain relieving medicine or a chaplain.</p>

<p>Add to that, the victim didn’t get to live out the course of their natural life.</p>

<p>Any murderer who somehow thinks they deserve to be released from prison because they are dying hasn’t yet acknowledged the depth of the suffering and deprivation that they inflicted on their victims and their victims’ families.</p>

<p>Perhaps the karma in this is that in dying in prison the murderer finally will be in a position to realize what they did to others.</p>

<p>A few months ago, I heard a talk by a man who had been the warden of the prison in Florida that houses men on death row. The man had entered his job being a staunch advocate of the death penalty. He even had had a beloved nephew who had been brutally murdered. After working for years at the prison on Florida and presiding over the executions of three murderers, the man had a change of heart.</p>

<p>He said that he believed that life in prison was a far worse sentence than the death penalty.</p>

<p>Atkins’ final days are a prime example of the truth of the exwarden’s words.</p>

<p>In fact, she could become a poster child for abolishing the death penalty. </p>

<p>The Bible says that we reap what we sow.
The Buddha said, “If you speak or act with a corrupted heart,
then suffering follows you – as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox
that pulls it.”</p>

<p>This is karma. Karma isn’t something that magically happens. Karma is something that naturally occurs because each action that one takes has a natural consequence.</p>

<p>As the OP, I am appreciative of all who have taken the time to respond to this thread. Your comments have helped broaden my perspective on this situation.</p>

107

<p>…“He said that he believed that life in prison was a far worse sentence than the death penalty…”</p>

<p>Worse for who? The person who committed the crime, maybe, but certainly not for the families of the victims.<br>
I know there is no easy answer in all of this…</p>

108

<p>"Worse for who? The person who committed the crime, maybe, but certainly not for the families of the victims. </p>

<p>You can’t speak for all of the families of victims. I have a friend whose brother was murdered in front of her when she was 4. He was three. She is anti death penalty.</p>

<p>In the audience during the former death row warden’s talk was a woman whose granddaughter had been brutally murdered, and the woman herself had been injured by a stranger who had broken into her house. That woman was anti death penalty.</p>

<p>I’ve read about murder victims’ families who thought their pain would end when the murderer was executed. It didn’t because of course their loved one was still dead. In fact, the victims’ families were surprised to learn that the murderer’s execution didn’t bring them any relief.</p>

<p>"MVFR members have lost family members to murder or execution and oppose the death penalty. Friends of MVFR support these members and help bring their stories to the public, the press and policy makers.</p>

<p>We oppose the death penalty for a variety of reasons — endless trials re-open emotional wounds and put off the time when real healing can begin, the vast resources and attention spent on the death penalty is better spent supporting victims and preventing crime in the first place, the risk of executing the innocent is too high a price to pay, biases of geography, race and class plague the system, executions create more families who have lost a loved one to killing, and many of us think it is just plain wrong for the state to kill."
[Welcome</a> to MVFR | MVFR](<a href=“Official MEGA888 / 918KISS / PUSSY888 / XE88 APK Download ⚡”>http://www.mvfr.org/)</p>

<p>"Others murder victims’ families explained that responding to one killing with another killing do not honor their loved ones. “We can’t imagine making the death of another human being her memorial” said Jennifer Bishop.</p>

<pre><code> “When the prosecutors in Houston, Texas, promised to give the murderer the death penalty I was extremely gratified, at first. In fact, I went to the trial every day because I thought that hearing the judge pronounce the sentence of death would bring me some relief. Instead of healing, I found myself focusing on my anger and hatred, which only seemed to increase the pain I felt over the loss of my mother. Eventually I came to realize that capital punishment was not the answer because wishing for another human being to die wasn’t helping me heal”.-- Celeste Dixon"
</code></pre>

<p>[Death</a> Penalty: Murder victims’ families against Death Penalty](<a href=“http://blogs.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/archive/2008/01/30/murder-victims--families-against-death-penalty.htm]Death”>http://blogs.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/archive/2008/01/30/murder-victims--families-against-death-penalty.htm)</p>

<p>An acquaintance of mine who is anti death penalty is a twentysomething woman who was almost killed when while in college, she was robbed by a teen who shot her in the chest. Fortunately, the bullet missed her heart.</p>

<p>After that, the woman changed her major to social work because she wanted to learn why any teen could become so violent, and she wanted to prevent teens from becoming violent. Now, she works staffing the state’s hotline that incarcerated teens use to report their being physically abused while in the juvenile detention system.</p>

<p>There really are many people – including victims’ families – who are against the death penalty because they believe that as Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”</p>

109

<p>Every one of these release decisions is an exercise in weighing justice against mercy and compassion for the dying inmate. I could imagine cases that I would agree with release, but for me, the circumstances of the crime, the suffering of the victim, the deliberateness as opposed to impulsiveness of the murder would play a part in deciding when the hard line of justice should be moved in favor of mercy. </p>

<p>For this inmate, I believe that satisfying justice for society and the victims must take precedence over compassion for Atkins, even if she is sick and dying, and that denying release was the right thing to do. </p>

<p>If ever there is a crime that can be considered unforgivable, it was that one.</p>

110

<p>From Garland,

</p>

<p>Really important questions, garland, and I will share my views. I think that compassion and justice can work together and in fact are two of the characteristics of God that Jesus reveals. God, through Jesus, frees us from the guilt of our sins but not from the consequences. The consequences for Atkins’ crimes were to lose her freedom for the extent of her life. To be given her freedom back --even a ‘relatively’ small freedom such as her ability to choose the place of her death and the people who will be with her at the end – is unjust. She forfeited this freedom when she committed those crimes, and she must live and die with the consequences. Within the boundaries of her imprisonment, she should be offered compassion, forgiveness from God, medicine to reduce her physical discomfort and company so she does not die alone. But she should not be granted freedom since that releases her from the consequences of her crimes.</p>

111

<p>Well said, jazzymom.</p>

112

<p>“It would absolutely kill me, if I was the parent of one of those victims, and this woman got to have a good dying experience with her family after what she did.”</p>

<p>I think this argument has some real bite, but the problem with it is that it would argue for life without parole for all murderers, because that will be what the family of the victim will almost always want. This could be the policy, of course, but it would be a huge financial investment that society hasn’t yet chosen to make. I guess the Atkins case is the one that gets discussed because the crime was so heinous.</p>

113

<p>The law and most people recognize different levels of murder and attach far different sentences for them.</p>

114

<p>The fact that Ms. Atkins is so young as to have allowed her victim’s immediate family to survive is also part of the equation. Were she very elderly, with no family of the victims left, there might be more inclination to cut her some more slack, but the familes do survive and the crimes still resonate.</p>

115

<p>Tough situation.
The two women were manipulated by manson, and it could be argued that they were brainwashed.
They obviously weren’t “themselves” during the murder, and were used by manson.
Karma has done its job.
The women, after seperated from manson/not under his control, showed obvious remorse and guilt. They committed a horrific act, and now they are dying in a slow, painful way, and I think that’s punishment enough. It will save the jail some money to release them early and it would be the humane thing to do.
No one will ever forget their crime, and their name will forever be engrained in history.
I feel manson prayed on the two girls, manipulated and used them. It doesn’t justify their actions.
I don’t see the harm of allowing someone to face death with their loved ones. Karma.</p>

116

<p>Her loved ones can visit her, in jail. Karma has nothing to do with anything in the justice system. Thankfully</p>

117

<p>The universe has a way of equally things out.
There is no way she will die comfortably. I watched my non paternal grandmother die of cancer after 10 years of suffering, and my great grandmother suffer through alzeiheimers and die of a stroke.
She will suffer regardless of where she is.
I also feel that those two women were used by manson, they were young a naive, and manson is a manipulator. If you watch the state those 2 were in during the crimes, it was obvious something was wrong with them.
Yes, they should have gone to jail. They, unlike manson, have shown remorse and guilt. The act they committed was horrific, but I would consider them to have been mentaly unstable at the time, and unaware of their actions.
The punishment may have been more severe because of the fear over the son of sam(not sure the years) and manson murders. I feel manson is plain sick, and manipulated others to perpetrate acts he was too afraid to commit, for fear of being caught/
Those women have paid for their acts, and are suffering painful deaths as well.
I can see and understand both sides. I think the decision should be made by the Tates.</p>

118

<p>I think even my deep spring of compassion would be tested if this were Charles Manson instead of Susan Atkin…</p>