Where Will You Be on Charlie Manson’s Wedding Day?

By DON ROLLINS

The beard is gone gray, the face more hollowed and the forehead swastika a bit faded. But for the shark-dead eyes, mass murderer Charles Manson circa 2014 looks more like the aging patriarch of a survivalist colony than a deranged monster responsible for at least seven horrific deaths.

It was summer 1969 when Manson and 11 of his devotees collectively known as the “Manson Family” embarked on a grisly killing spree in the hills outside Los Angeles.

There is no firm evidence Manson participated in any of the murders – targeted or random; but his role as chief orchestrator was well established by subsequent investigations and Family member confessions.

The sordid narrative gained instant attention, turning even more surreal starting June 15, 1970, as the circus-like Manson/Tate-La Bianca murder trial finally took shape. (The case and trial were alternately referred to in relation to the accused as well as three victims, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and actress Sharon Tate.)

Family members and sympathizers disrupted the proceedings in and outside the Los Angeles County courthouse, staging sit-ins near entrances and threatening witnesses for the prosecution; and Manson himself took an active part in an attempt to highjack the trial.

In a Newsweek interview given on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the murders, then chief prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi described the trial’s beyond-dysfunctional atmosphere: “It was the longest murder trial we’d ever had in America up to that point: nine months. And it was the most expensive up to that point, at $1 million.

Outside the courthouse, there was a group of Manson family members conducting a 24-hour-a-day vigil for him. The media was interviewing them every day. Manson came into court one day with an X carved into his forehead, and the next day they all had X’s on their foreheads.

One day during the trial, [Manson] got a hold of a sharp pencil, and from a standing position, he leaps over the counsel’s table with this pencil and starts approaching the judge. The bailiffs immediately tackled him and, as they were dragging him out of the courtroom, he shouted to the judge: “In the name of Christian justice, someone should chop off your head.” The judge started carrying a .38-caliber revolver under his robe in court after that.”

In the end Manson and his four Family member co-defendants were found guilty on all 27 counts and given the death penalty. But all five sentences were commuted to life in prison when California in 1972 abolished capital punishment.

Charles “Charlie” Manson is 80 years old and incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison, Corcoran, Calif. His parole has been denied 12 times. Manson has remained a topic of discussion in the decades since these events, if only as a reliable archetype for evil personified. As Bugliosi once remarked, Manson still compels our attention if only for his sheer lack of self-regulation and remorse.

But as of last month Manson garnered public attention for a very different reason: He wants to get married. And, pardon the pun, he seems dead serious.

The ostensible bride-to-be is Star (previously Afton Burton) who is more than a half-century Manson’s junior. Critics of the couple see in the relationship the same controlling dynamic behind the killings, yet when interviewed Star is adamant Manson has no such hold over her.

But while the couple seem at peace with even so limited a marriage arrangement (prison rules forbid conjugal visits) a goodly portion of the interested online masses were outraged when news broke of Manson’s Nov. 7 marriage application: How can so despicable a person be allowed to legally marry? Other bloggers and columnists countered with appeals to 14th Amendment guarantees, such as those outlined in Zablocki v. Redtail, 1978 in which the US Supreme Court found that inmates have the right to marry. For them Charlie Manson’s demonic past does is not at issue. The question they rightly pose is does the Constitution fully extend to his prison cell.

As of now the more legally-minded hold sway on prisoner weddings. Shameful efforts in Texas to put constraints on this freedom aside, there are no signs of state-level interventions.

The notion of corporate good trumping personal affronts remains a difficult if necessary tenet in American lawmaking. Assuming Manson’s wedding day actually materializes, we don’t have to celebrate the occasion. But we can take some measure of pride in the rule of law and access to the Constitution, even when doing so roils the blood.

Don Rollins is a juvenile court program coordinator and Unitarian Universalist minister. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015

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