A growing chorus of prosecutors and other critics is urging state prison officials to reject former Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer Susan Atkins' request for "compassionate release" because of a terminal illness.
A state board will take up the issue today. Corrections officials say the state has spent more than $1.4 million providing medical care and security for Atkins since her diagnosis of terminal brain cancer in March.
The state Board of Parole Hearings has received about 100 letters, most of them opposing her release.
In a letter Friday to the chairman of the parole board, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Atkins' "horrific crimes alone warrant a denial of her request."
Cooley said Atkins, 60, was not a good candidate for compassionate release because she had "failed to demonstrate genuine remorse and lacks insight and understanding of the gravity of her crimes."
Atkins has been in state prison for 37 years, longer than any other female inmate in California, officials said.
Atkins and other members of Manson's cult were convicted in seven murders during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area over two nights in 1969. Actress Sharon Tate, the wife of film director Roman Polanski, was 8 1/2 months pregnant when she and four others were killed at her hilltop home in Benedict Canyon.
The initial request for release consideration was made by doctors and prison officials after it was determined that Atkins had less than six months to live. Officials at her prison in Chino approved her release, as did officials at corrections headquarters in Sacramento.
"She can't care for herself, she can't feed herself or even sit up in bed by herself," said her attorney, Eric P. Lampel. In addition to the cancer, Atkins had her leg amputated. "The reality is, even if she gets this compassionate release, she won't leave her hospital room."
Lampel said his client was not a threat to society and had been a model prisoner for nearly four decades.
"It was a horrific crime; she should have been convicted. She helped. She participated and she got the sentence she got and she fulfilled it," Lampel said.
The issue has divided two prosecutors in the Tate-La Bianca killings, who had successfully argued for the death penalty before it was temporarily ruled unconstitutional. The killers' sentences were commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
