Word: mansons
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...simple but mythologized world of the classic American western. The orderly administration of justice took a beating, and even the President inadvertently contributed in a small way. With a slip of the tongue, he passed judgment on a man on trial for his life in California: Charles Manson, accused of masterminding the gruesome 1969 Sharon Tate murders. Four days later, a California superior court judge, kidnaped from his courtroom, died along with three of his captors in a grisly gun battle with police. Black Panther Huey Newton, freed on $50,000 bail while awaiting a new trial for voluntary manslaughter...
Verbal Fencing. It was in Denver's Federal Building that President Nixon committed the startling gaffe of prejudging the case of Charles Manson. While complaining that the press had made Manson a glamorous hero, Nixon said: "Here was a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason." For a lawyer who occasionally delivers homilies on legal propriety, this was a serious breach...
...damage was already done. It was not until half an hour after Nixon spoke that Press Secretary Ron Ziegler reappeared before the newsmen. After some minutes of verbal fencing, Ziegler agreed that Nixon's words about Manson should be retracted. When Ziegler told Nixon what had happened, the President was surprised: "I said 'charged,' " he replied. During the 3½-hour flight back to Washington, Mitchell persuaded Nixon to put out a statement backing Ziegler up. It read in part: "The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person in any circumstances...
...President's faux pas came in the middle of another attack on his frequent foe, the press. Nixon had just come from a ten-day working holiday in San Clemente, where he found himself angered by the coverage given the Manson case in the local media. Many of the young, Nixon said in Denver, "tend to glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities." Was it the fault of the press? Yes and no, said Nixon. Yes: "It is done perhaps because people want to read or see that kind of story." No: "This...
Finally there was the horror implicit in Mrs. Kasabian's account of a random search for murder victims who still do not know how close they came to death. Before Manson finally settled on the LaBiancas, she said, he and his followers had taken a long, circuitous drive around Los Angeles seeking victims. At one small house the sight of chil dren's pictures made him turn away; a locked door on a church may have saved a clergyman...