Charles Manson Sentenced to Death (1971)
On April 19, 1971, Charles Manson and three members of his "family" were sentenced to death following their convictions on twenty-seven separate counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy. The convictions came following what were called the Tate and LaBianca murders.
In early August 1969, Charles Manson directed three female members of the Manson Family to go to the home of actress Sharon Tate, wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski, and kill everyone in the house. The family members murdered four people that night, including Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folgers Coffee fortune. When they were done, group leader Susan Atkins wrote "pig" on the door in Tate’s blood.
Not long after the Tate murders, the three Family members, plus two others and Charles Manson himself went to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. There, they brutally tortured and murdered the couple. Again, the group left a message in blood that said "death to pigs."
After a long investigation, warrants were issued in December 1969 for the three family members involved in the Tate and LaBianca murders, and for Charles Manson. The trial began on June 15, 1970 and lasted until January of 1971.
On January 25, 1971, guilty verdicts were returned against Manson and the three women on each of the twenty-seven separate counts against them. Two months later, the jury also returned verdicts for all four defendants in favor of death on all counts.
On April 19, 1971, Judge Charles Older sentenced the four to their deaths to be carried out by the State of California.
Only a year later, a ruling in California neutralized California’s current death sentences, so the four were never put to death. To date, Charles Manson has been denied parole eleven times. He will be eligible for parole again in 2012.